


When night comes

by inflomora, maximoffs, ubertrash



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Catholic Matt Murdock, Enemies to Lovers, Existential Dread, Horror, Humor, M/M, New York City where the moon is always full and the streets are always damp, Non-binary Loki, Pining, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slow Burn, Thor & Loki are not siblings in this one, Vampire Bucky Barnes, Vampire hunter Steve Rogers, Violence, coffin sharing, implied Matt Murdock/Elektra Natchios, moments in cathedrals, sexy-gritty-filthy vampire night clubs, very minor Frank Castle/Karen Page
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inflomora/pseuds/inflomora, https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximoffs/pseuds/maximoffs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ubertrash/pseuds/ubertrash
Summary: “I could kill you,” the vampire says darkly. Steve gets the impression that this is more for show than it is genuine. Like he’s trying to scare him away. “It would be quick and no one would bat an eye. Accidents happen a lot here.”“Why don’t you tell me your name first? We’ve sat here sharing a drink. I think I deserve to know the name of the man who may or may not kill me.”“Oh,” the man who may or may not kill Steve says, and gives him a lopsided smile. “It’s Bucky.”OR: After an extended absence from New York, Steve Rogers returns home to hunt vampires. He never expects to meet one he doesn't mind.OR: Oh, Anne Rice, we're really in it now.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 57
Kudos: 161
Collections: Not Another Stucky Big Bang 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hi! i'm so stoked to finally be able to share this spooky little fic about vampires and dramatic existential dread and pining and jokes and the Catholic Aesthetic with you guys. NASBB was a dream event to participate in.
> 
> thank you to THE incredible [ubertrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ubertrash) and [inflomora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inflomora/) for making truly stunning art for this collab. i can't say enough good things about their wonderful work. thank you also to [this person](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/) who listened to me stress for weeks on end, tried to get my semicolon addiction under control, and reassured me that this fic is, actually, readable.
> 
> as always, i simply do not take responsibility for any grammatical, continuity, or logical errors. are they "technically" my fault? sure. but i stand by my position anyway.

The first week he’s back, it rains enough to flood the city. It doesn’t, of course— flood. That would be too easy, too merciful, too unfair to the inhabitants who deserve to live, and to those who deserve to die in far worse ways. Steve Rogers is not— tries not to be— a petty man, but just is just. Right is right. He takes the rain as an act of God welcoming him home, an absent Father raising His hand in unconcerned greeting, hazy gaze trying to catch the last thirty minutes of the game while you walk through the front door. Yes, Steve still believes in God. No, they don’t talk much anymore.

He stands under the downpour anyway, soaking, and he lets it cleanse him of his sins. 

In the dark it accompanies him, and it gets trapped in his boots. It’s a steady, unbeatable thing, quiet like assassins in the night. Steve would almost prefer the rattling of windows and doors, gunshot-thundering, the sky white. It would do him no favors for his work, but it would match his mood. Instead he gets this: deep-sea coming down, black sheets reflecting his own eyes back at him in the concrete. 

The patrol is unfamiliar here; the stakes still unclear. There are areas of the city he does not need to worry about, like Hell’s Kitchen, and there are areas he refuses to step foot in, like Brooklyn. All of it. Not yet— maybe not ever. A potential discussion between him and his God, if those channels of communication ever open up again. It’s easier now, fresh on his feet, to monitor FiDi, where two kinds of bloodsuckers live. If his source is right, a pack of ferals hunt the area, covenless and reckless and lawless. If his source is wrong, it’s field practice; he’s getting to know the territory again. The opportunity to go back to his apartment and take Sam up on his offer isn’t going to vanish… and he wants to dip his toes in the sand before learning all the rules. 

Steve has been hunting for over a decade, but never in New York. This is an entirely different ball game now.

He turns off of Wall Street and down Broadway, down to where Battery Park is. This may be a new city, but Steve has learned that vampires everywhere are predominantly the same. Jealous, vengeful, and driven by taste. Dangerous while hungry— but stupid, too. Absence, he has noticed, makes them stupider. Like rabid dogs. If they haven’t found food by this time of night— almost 2 in the morning— they get desperate, sticking to open, public places, looking for teenagers fucking or homeless stragglers, sleeping under the light of the moon. 

It’s quiet. Steve passes the Charging Bull statue, and readies himself.

It’s an extraordinary thing, really— a miracle of sorts. As he crosses the street and into the park, the rain stops. The sky seems to brighten, a pastel shade of purple and pink, like dyed confectionary sugar. He smiles to himself, and he begins the first lap.

It doesn’t take too long.

That’s the thing about vampires.

They tend to be obvious.

There are two of them, roughly 25 meters away, crouched around a body. Steve knows instinctively that it is too late for this body; as he approaches he can see the color so gone it’s almost turned purple. Something like the sky. He makes no effort to hide the fact that he’s there, and that he’s seen them. He wants to be seen back. He wants to be the last thing seen.

It’s clear that one of them is supposed to be the lookout while the other drains the last of the human— a man, by the looks of it, middle-aged and homeless like Steve suspected. Steve feels nothing for this man, because this is a line of work too unbearable for the overly sensitive, and he feels nothing for the vampires, because feelings break focus, and there is always time for them later, among the living. 

The lookout says something to the other and they both stand, impossibly quick, their bodies just shroud and shadow in the light of the night. When the first one attacks, Steve is ready for him, though he has not slowed his stride, and though he has no intention to. He simply punches up, uppercut to the jaw, and breaks three of the beast’s teeth. The thing that looks like a man staggers backward, screeching, face unhinged and on fire. He isn’t expecting brass knuckles coated in silver. None of them ever are. He flails upright again, trying to get some purchase on the ground beneath his feet, and Steve’s fist goes through the bridge of his nose and his eyes, right into his skull. 

It’s messy. He shakes his fist out of the thing’s head, while still moving forward. Bits of skull and brain matter splatter to the floor; they stain the boots on his feet. The other one, which has been watching all this time, moves forward into position, legs bent, arms up. It will make no difference. Steve strides toward him at his same, brisk pace and with the hand that isn’t soaked in vampire, pulls out his trusty Colt 1911 Classic. He pulls it up and shoots once— right through the heart, a pinprick of blood trickling down the monster’s chest. The precision is… truly a work of art. Another man would preen, just a little. 

Steve does not preen. He sits on a nearby bench, because he is already soaking wet anyway, and he shakes the guts off of his skin, and off of his trench. He watches as the bodies slowly break apart into ash, and smoke, and dissolve into the night air. 

Everything smells like rain and honeysuckle. Everything is almost peaceful apart from the dead man at his feet, his body an ugly weight on an otherwise tranquil night. From his other pocket, Steve takes out a flask, unscrews it, and raises a toast to the dead— to the _truly_ dead— to the dead who no longer walk. He drinks, and puts the flask away, and after another moment, finally gets up.

It is both exhilarating and anticlimactic: his first kill in the city. Steve has been fastidious and diligent— traits that don’t always come naturally to him— for so long, working up the skill to come back here. He has hunted enough vampires to lose count, staking his way through most of the south and the pacific northwest, weathering his skin and his sense of peace in nameless towns, under haunted trees, and along hateful shorelines. The reality of the matter is that more vampires live in the city of New York than exist between the states of Georgia to Arizona. 

So you will forgive him for this one misstep. 

You will forgive him when, after such an easy and uncomplicated kill, Steve Rogers relaxes, ever so slightly. It is only for this one night, and he has been bone-tired, for so, so long. This homecoming has made him tired. The ghost of his mother, looming like a northern light over him. Sam, at the apartment, waiting. Steve’s exhaustion is a palpable thing, anchor-ankled, sinking into quicksand. It clutches and rails, and so when he leaves Battery Park, he is not preying, or stalking, or hunting anymore. 

He is simply a man leaving a park, unperturbed and unaware of two watchful eyes, perched atop the trees, glimmering in the moonlight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feelings surpass reality and to ground himself he has to lie very still, and think only of facts. A single blade of grass between thumb and index finger, the slickness of it. The image of his hands, growing paler under the moonlight, open and cold like plates. One man, hurrying in the dark, his face drawn, wet from rain. Steve Rogers.

“Tell me,” the Queen says, lounging elegantly on a chaise the color of fresh blood, “about the Vampire Hunter.”

Bucky is kneeling. It’s absurd. The Queen makes them kneel. 

“He’s fast,” Bucky says now, trying to maintain respectful eye contact. “There were two ferals and they both saw him coming; it should have been easy for them. But he took them out in seconds.” 

“How?”

“Brass knuckles, coated in silver. And a revolver. Silver bullets, I’m guessing.” 

“I’d rather you didn’t guess,” the Queen says, loftily. 

“They were silver bullets,” Bucky says, gritting his teeth. “I could smell them.”

“Well,” the Queen says. “That is unfortunate.”

They shift, sitting up, while Bucky stays on his knees. The room is impossibly lavish for where it sits— the basement of a nightclub— but the King and Queen have created opulence in their vicious, unyielding power. The Coven has been dug deep enough into the ground to have high ceilings, a network of hallways, meeting rooms, bedrooms, and storage locked tight under the earth where the sun can never reach them. Long gone are the days of hiding in corners, of sleeping lightly enough to never dream, to sense danger, to keep your body taut and your heart hidden lest any errant stakes come swinging by. There are other covens, Bucky knows, bigger ones, meaner ones, austere and puritanical ones. Covens holding much less power, scrambling to hold their own within the underworld of the city’s immortals. 

_It is easy_ , the Queen once said to him, not long after they turned him, _to confuse immortality with invincibility._

Bucky vows never to do that. He vows to keep his wits, despite the changes he sees within and around him. He knows he is lucky to have been found by _this_ particular Coven, with its long corridors and private rooms. He knows he is lucky to have space to move around.

The room he’s in now— the Drawing Room— has been decorated garishly: furniture and upholstery done in goth macabre-rococo style, black ivy and black roses, mirrors encased in Florentine gilt. There is a real Goya hanging above the chaise where the Queen sits now, what looks to be four witches and their familiar, casting a spell on two pitiful souls. There are candles perpetually dripping wax onto the expensive floorboards— cut from the oldest tree in Romania and imported to downtown Manhattan— and chairs, vases, side tables and clocks stolen from every corner of every museum of the world. There is a Fabergé egg— a personal gift commissioned by the King to the Queen— the likes of which the mortal world has never seen before. It is black and encrusted with emeralds, and because the Queen never opens it up in front of others, there is not a living soul alive that knows what it holds. 

The chaise the Queen sits on now is said to have belonged to Anne Boleyn.

It is an ugly room. There are rumors, Bucky has heard, that the Queen requested it so, just to see if the King could deliver. They play these games to prove they are in love. 

“Is that all?” the Queen asks now, towering over Bucky in a long, black gown. 

“Yes,” Bucky says. “Like I said, it was quick. It wasn’t… what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“What _you_ said about the Hunters is that they’re stupid, easy to manipulate, and often clumsy. This man was none of those things. The only— the one thing that surprised me about him, after all of that, was that he didn’t catch me, too.” 

“Oh,” the Queen says, pouting their lips in mock-concern. “That _would_ be a shame.”

“Why make me just to fling me into an open flame?”

“I made you to be useful.”

“No,” Bucky protests, though he knows he shouldn’t. He is currently the lowest man on the totem pole, a thing to be jettisoned if necessary. He is in no hierarchical position to question the Queen, who could erase his existence just by willing it. But he does. There is something between them he can almost hold; it’s diamond-hard and unbreakable, a box of blue light, and Bucky senses that because of this impalpable box the Queen will keep him safe. What he wants to know is why. What he wants to know is how far he can push this.

Before they can continue, however, the King walks in, unceremonious and bold, his presence gleaming even in the dim light. 

“What news of the Hunter?” he says, nudging the Queen over so he can join them on the chaise. They are every bit as different as two people— entities, immortals, whatever the preference— can be. Where the Queen is slight and lean, the King is expansive, all muscle, imposing. While the Queen’s features and countenance shift— feminine to masculine, both sexless and entirely sexual— the King is steady and even, a presence in every room whether he likes it or not. They are both, Bucky admits— however begrudgingly— impossibly beautiful, and impossible not to look at. 

“I was just telling Loki that he’s well-equipped and quick. It was clear to me that he’s been doing this for some time, and— ” Bucky pauses here, uninclined to speak inaccurate or frivolous words, “— and he’s dispassionate. Controlled. It feels like a job to him, which makes me think it’s actually so much more than that.”

“Expand on that,” Loki says.

“I don’t know. It was dark. But he looked like a man whose vendetta is too important to let on. Overcompensating nonchalance.”

“Wait,” Thor interrupts, turning his attention away from Bucky. “Loki, why do you make them kneel?”

The Queen’s eyebrow quirks up. They smile. “It pleases me.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head, and looks back at Bucky. “You can stand.”

“You’ve come too late, anyway,” the Queen says, shifting their body away from the King’s. Bucky stands, ignoring the ache of his body. He’s too new, barely a year turned, and he still has phantom mortality pains. “We’ve already finished our discussion of _Steve Rogers_. Your presence is unnecessary.”

“My presence is never unnecessary.”

“It is often unnecessary. You would better suit my needs if you were just a body without a brain, which is what it often feels like, yet you continue to— ” 

Inwardly, Bucky sighs, wanting to leave them to their own devices but also to stay for the company, which he lacks greatly from night to night. If Bucky had been given a choice between life and _this_ , he would have chosen life. Because Bucky had not been given that choice but another one, a choice between _this_ — something that is not quite life but not quite death either— and the existence of a lab rat, trapped and tortured, he had chosen this. A sort of freedom. An almost-life. 

Bucky clears his throat. The King and the Queen turn to look at him.

“What is it?” Thor asks, distractedly. His hand is already on the Queen’s thigh.

“Did you want me to stay and watch you fight, or can I leave?”

A shrug. Thor is the more casual of them, somehow, but slightly more off-putting nevertheless. “You don’t really want to stay for what this will turn into.”

“Unless you’d like to join,” Loki says, smiling a terrible smile. “I _did_ pick you partially for your looks.” 

“Thanks,” Bucky says, tightly, “but I think I’ll go.”

“Pity,” Loki says, but waves a hand anyway, dismissing him.

There isn’t much for Bucky to do. Before this new life, and before the brief portion that preceded it, he was only a man. Neither particularly impressive nor abysmally below average, but a flesh-and-blood man nevertheless— one with aspirations and dreams and a genuine fondness for the sun on his face. 

Loki took the sun.

There is so much about the Queen to dislike, beginning with their carelessness and ending with their complete disdain for human life, but Bucky has learned that a connection exists between vampire and maker, and that it is impossible to sever. Their coven is diverse enough to house vagrants and ancient ones alike, makers and their— for lack of a better term— offspring, yet Thor and Loki never seem to create progeny of their own. The others, like Val and Castle and Logan, enjoy the art of turning almost as much as they enjoy their bloodlust, but the King and Queen are different; they are distant somehow. Besides Bucky. 

There is nothing in Loki’s manner to indicate that Bucky’s turning was an act of compassion, or even pity, and there is certainly nothing in their manner to indicate that they _like_ Bucky as a person. But there’s something tenable anyway: a possessiveness, a vicious, unassailable tie between them that Bucky could not put into words even if he tried. 

He would put his body between Loki and the sun if it were necessary; and, Loki would never let him.

Bucky’s room is well-furnished and comfortable, if not particularly spacious. There’s no reason for it to be, as all he does in there is sleep, and sometimes, if he is feeling particularly antisocial, read, or keep a journal. The space underneath the nightclub that they’ve made their home has a rather impressive library, common rooms for socializing, and a bar. There are rooms to fuck in and there are rooms to kill in. There are combat training rooms, which have proven to be the most useful, out of all the other amenities. The literature and movies make it seem as though vampires are automatically gifted with MMA skills, but fiction is always more glamorous than reality. Bucky’s senses and speed were heightened immediately upon his turn, but he hadn’t woken up in the moonlight with the ability to land a perfect uppercut. 

He has worked for it, though. He has shown promise, only a year into his new life, and Loki seems pleased enough to send him on reconnaissance missions— first together, and now alone. Thor is less concerned with these assignments; it’s clear to Bucky that he prefers brute strength and confrontation to the steady biding of time, yet he defers to the Queen anyway. It’s a balance that works. The Coven is one of the oldest in the world, he had once heard Castle boast; it has remained standing even as empires have fallen.

There are other things Bucky learns too. Of what happens to vampires who stray from their chosen families, or attempt to strike against them. He learns about the ones who sever the tie between themselves and their makers, fated to stalk the world alone and wretched for the rest of their days. They are tormented; an unbreakable love ripped from them. Sif has told him it feels like one-half of your soul dying. She has told him she would rather walk into the sun than lose Heimdall. 

It’s true that the physical senses are heightened to non-quantifiable levels, but there is something else, something Bucky had not expected. At times it feels as though his very soul is on fire, hell-hot and sputtering against his ribcage, longing to get away from him. An undefinable yearning overtakes him and he thinks that he will die from it although he cannot die, and never will. Bucky Barnes, in his legitimate life, had not been a man prone to dramatics; but every night as the undead he is hungry and aching and alone. He feels like a child teething. He wants to launch himself into the moon. 

Feelings surpass reality and to ground himself he has to lie very still, and think only of facts. A single blade of grass between thumb and index finger, the slickness of it. The image of his hands, growing paler under the moonlight, open and cold like plates. One man, hurrying in the dark, his face drawn, wet from rain. Steve Rogers.  
  


***

  
  
Steve is soaked to the bone when he gets home, stomping his feet on the welcome mat— “GET OFF MY LAWN!”— to really no avail. Inside, he strips in the hallway, careful not to drip on the second pair of boots on the shoe rack. The tableside lamp is on in the living room, and Steve knows Sam is reading before he even sees him curled up on the couch with a book. 

“Hey man,” Steve says, running a hand through his wet hair.

“Hey.” Sam looks up, smiles. “How’d it go?”

“It went,” Steve says. He disappears into his room for a moment to towel off and change, and Sam— a godsend— has the kettle going when he comes back out. 

“They’re different here.”

“Yeah,” Steve nods. He pulls out a mug for himself and glances over his shoulder at Sam. “Do you— ?”

“Nah,” Sam says. “It doesn’t taste like anything to me. Still adjusting.” 

Steve nods again; there’s a tightness to his jaw that Sam does not miss, an inevitable tension in the room at every unavoidable reminder. It’s nothing either of them can help; it just is. When Steve sits down across from his oldest friend in the world, he notices Sam looks wan, more exhausted than he’s let on. He frowns.

“I was going to run by the hospital in the morning, but I can go now if you need.”

“No,” Sam says. “It’s okay.”

“You look tired.”

“I manage.”

“You should be eating every night.”

Sam runs his tongue along his bottom lip, teeth so much sharper now than they used to be. “I manage,” he repeats. “I’m not going to die overnight.”

“What would happen? If you didn’t eat?”

“I— don’t know,” Sam says, giving Steve a wry look. “You want me to try it out?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Steve, I know you’re being a good friend. But I can leave. I get it.”

“No,” Steve says, leaning in now, clasping Sam’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to leave. I’m just— ”

“Having a hard time dealing with the fact that your best friend is now one of the monsters you’ve dedicated your life to destroying?”

“...Yeah. That.” A pause. “You’re not a monster, Sam.”

“Aren’t I?”

“No,” Steve says, firmly. “You’re not like the others. You’re not a cold-blooded killer. You’re a good person, who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I don’t know if I’m technically a person anymore,” Sam says with a sigh. “And I may not be a cold-blooded killer, but I get the urge sometimes, Steve. More than sometimes.” 

“You don’t act on it,” Steve says, and he pulls away, gives Sam a nod. _Subject closed_ , the nod says. There’s never any room for argument with Steve Rogers. “You said you’d tell me more about the situation here.”

“Yeah,” Sam says with a sigh, “okay.” He sets his book down and marks it— the irony is not lost on Steve. _Interview with the Vampire_. They laugh, both of them, tentatively. 

Steve sips his tea and waits.

“From what you’ve told me about the south and from what I’ve experienced firsthand here, the east coast vampires seem to be more organized and better structured than what you’re used to. Their covens are hierarchical and tight-knit, like— imagine a crime family, I guess,” Sam says. “But deadlier, and less prone to betraying one another.”

“How is that?” Steve asks. “What I mean is, specifically, how do you know they won’t betray one another?”

“I don’t know it for a fact, and I don’t want to say it’s true across the board. There are ferals, and you know how their loyalties are strictly self-interested. But I think it would help if I tried to explain how it feels to be turned, first.”

“I don’t want to hear that, Sam.” 

Sam sighs. The love between them feels unwavering and mercurial, tainted yet tenable. There is not a molecule of Sam’s existence that does not trust Steve, yet the shift he feels— that they both feel— in their relationship is undeniable. Steve looks at Sam with a tightness and an anger that is directed wholly at the fact that this is a thing that has happened to Sam, that Steve himself was not there to stop it, that the rest of Sam’s life forever will be shrouded in darkness. It is a hatred toward the situation, and never toward Sam himself; but, it is a hatred and an anger nevertheless, and they are both unmoored by it. 

“I know you don’t,” Sam says. “But listen to me anyway. I didn’t ask to have my life ripped from me, but it happened. What I told you the night I called you was true— two ferals jumped me walking home from work. Same route I walked every night. They sucked me within an inch of my life and then they left me there to die, Steve.”

Sam watches Steve’s jaw tighten, but his expression is neutral besides. Hiding his feeling has never been Steve’s strong suit, but he is trying for Sam, in this moment, and Sam recognizes and is grateful for it.

“Riley found me. He ripped into his own arm and pressed the wound against my mouth. He cradled my head in his lap so that I wouldn’t be uncomfortable— like something used and thrown away.”

Sam remembers it now: a damp alley in a corner of Hell’s Kitchen, just three blocks from his restaurant. Broken glass from a beer bottle at his feet. The anemic faint, a nausea enveloping him. Something burning, far away.

“I know you think vampires have no humanity, Steve, but I’m telling you that they do. Listen to me. Because there’s no way you’ll be able to do the work that you do and survive here if you underestimate their willingness and love for one another.” 

Steve is watching him, carefully, a shadow across his face. After a moment, he nods. “Where is Riley now?”

Sam looks at him.

“Right,” Steve says with a sigh. “Right.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s— we don’t have to talk about him. Tell me more about the covens here.”

“From what I can tell, the biggest one operates downtown, somewhere around the Village. There’s a nightclub on Bleecker called Ragnarok where the vampire groupies hang out. I think your best bet would be to start there.” Sam takes a deep breath, leans his head back into the cushion. “Don’t go in swinging.”

“I’m not going to go in swinging, Sam.”

“No?”

“No.” A pause. “But I did consider it, briefly.”

“Thought so.”

Steve laughs. “Do you have any intel on them?”

“From what Riley tells me, they’re ancients. Started over in Iceland, or Norway, or something— back before the Vikings conquered the English kingdoms. A vampire’s power grows the longer he’s around, you know, and for the most part, coven hierarchy is based on age.”

“For the most part?”

“Well,” Sam says, “99% of the time. Riley says that the only way to skip rank, especially in these families that have been around forever, is to be _made_ by a leader.”

“I’m guessing that doesn’t happen often.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “So these guys are old and strong. How many of them are there?”

“Enough to starve out the ferals. Enough that you’re going to need a bigger gun.”

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Look, man,” Sam says. “I’m not an idiot. I know you’re here to find out who took your mother from you, but I also know you’re not going to stop there. I think you’re going to keep going until you get the last of them— or until they get you. And I don’t think you need me to tell you which scenario is the more likely.”

“No, Sam, you don’t.”

“Would it make a difference to you at all if I said I didn’t want you to do this?”

“To hunt vampires?”

“To die.”

Steve looks at Sam, and then he looks away. He stands. “I need to get some rest, buddy.”

Sam nods. 

“I’ll stop by the hospital first thing.” He reaches over, squeezes Sam’s knee. “Wake me up if you need anything.”

“Don’t worry about me.” 

“You know I always will,” Steve says, and Sam knows that he means it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is twenty-four when he walks into Clinton Church in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. There is no one else there.
> 
> “You’re just in time,” the priest says, offering a smile.

There’s a chill in the air when Steve heads out the next morning, and it makes its way into his brittle bones. He feels older than his age; old like a book, his pages yellowing. He feels like there is something unshakeable and crushing developing underneath his skin. Death, maybe. A growing tumor. God’s punishment for doing His job better than Him. 

Claire Temple is already waiting in the parking lot behind the hospital when he gets there, shivering in the chill of the early morning. She has a tote bag slung around her shoulder with HAMILTON & JEFFERSON & MADISON & WASHINGTON & BURR stamped on it— a souvenir from the musical. 

“You saw it?” Steve asks, nodding at her bag. 

“What? Oh— no.” Claire laughs. “I don’t have a spare $2,000 lying around. My little sister just thinks Daveed Diggs is hot.”

“Is she wrong?” Steve asks, squinting against the rising sun. 

“I guess not. Here.” She pulls the tote off of her shoulder and hands it to him. “You have a cooler in that backpack?”

“Nah,” Steve says, unzipping his plain black JanSport to reveal five S’well bottles. “These are insulated.”

“The miracle of 21st century innovation.” 

“Anyone coming?”

“No,” Claire says, her hands on her hips. “Hurry up, though— I’m late for my rounds and those bags won’t stay cold forever.”

Steve nods, unscrewing the caps off one by one so he can pour the blood bags she’s brought out for him into the bottles. “You know how much we appreciate you, right?”

“You better,” she says, the smile evident in her voice. “Give Sam all of my best. And you.” 

She waits for him to look up at her. 

“You stay safe.”

“I will, Claire,” Steve says, feeling the smallest amount of shame. He wouldn’t. It would be impossible to, in his line of work. Steve Rogers is not a man who takes pride in his dishonesty, but he is a man who knows its place and its necessity in his life. He is a man who knows that there is no point in looking this woman in the eyes and telling her that he will probably die doing what he does, and that Sam will eventually need to find someone else to pick up his meals. He screws the tops back on and zips up his backpack. 

“Thanks again, Claire,” he says, and he’s on his way.

The arrangement had been easy enough to make, courtesy of the priest Steve and Claire had in common. Nevertheless, it’s something Steve makes sure never to take for granted. Any bit of weight he can alleviate off of his oldest friend is like a weight off of him, too; if Steve could take pounds of flesh from his own back to comfort Sam he would do it. Working himself to the bone is a form of repentance. That old Catholic guilt with its flimsy gold coating, resting in his hair like a crown of thorns. The image of his best friend, bleeding out on the wet concrete. 

As he walks back to his apartment he thinks that all the blood in the world could not repay what Sam lost in that alley that night, and he thinks of what he would do for it to. 

Steve leaves the bottles in the fridge with a note. He’s given Sam the spare bedroom; the windows are all boarded up. They bought thick, black curtains. Steve hates the idea of a coffin, but he knows Sam has one slid under the bed anyway. Just in case. The thought of it could break his heart, if Steve let it.

He doesn’t let it.

For the most part, Steve hasn’t let himself feel anything at all since returning to New York. He’s only a mortal man. And it’s one thing to come home to the place that hurt you badly enough you had to run away from it, but it’s another thing entirely to face the things that made you leave. 

When he’s a little boy, Steve’s mother takes him to church on Sundays. They don’t have much, but they have this. She kneels down in front of him with her soft, beautiful smile and she straightens his tie. Her curls smell like citrus and honey, her shampoo a safety blanket to him in these early years. Steve has never loved anyone so much in his entire life, and he thinks he never will. His father, who leaves when he is still in his mother’s belly, does not factor into any of the equations in Steve’s life. Why should he? Sarah and Steve are enough for each other. They always will be.

Steve is eighteen when he moves out. He illustrates children's books during the day and bartends at night. He works and he works and he works and he sleeps when he can, saving a quarter of everything he’s earned and sending a quarter of everything he’s earned to his mother. They have dinner every Sunday night. And of course, church. These days, he fixes his own tie, but it’s still comforting to have his mother’s scent by his side; her presence like a calm breeze, loving and patient. She knows he worries about her, alone in the apartment with nothing but her thoughts and memories. She wants too badly to reach out to him and say, _Children should not lose sleep over the older lives of their parents_. But there is no use in pretending her son is adept at taking good advice. 

Steve is twenty-four when she is killed. 

Her apartment is broken into. Her blood stains the refrigerator, the linoleum flooring. When the police call Steve they say there has been an accident, and then they say it is a homicide, and then they bask in their uselessness as though they have done something. When Steve arrives at the apartment the blood in his veins has already frozen, an involuntary defense mechanism to keep him from tearing the city apart from top to bottom. It’s not the city’s fault, he tries to tell himself. But it is. _It is_.

Steve is twenty-four ten years ago. The existence of vampires and the supernatural is still a desperate, unthinkable thing. Fairy tales and Lovecraft. Stories intended to scare little children into behaving as they’re told. _Like the Bible_ , Steve thinks, ten years ago, crushed to the bone and drowning for answers that never come, no matter how many times he prays the rosary. 

Ironically, and not for the first time in his life, it’s Matthew Murdock he finds. 

Orphaned, blind, and Catholic, Father Murdock is at first glance a Dickensian fantasy come to life. Steve does not say this to him, though he thinks it in passing. The priest is of average height and the type of handsome that’s simultaneously mournful and naive. He is quiet and introspective, as all good priests are, and there’s an aura about him that begs to be taken care of, to make hot soup for, to treat with delicacy. It is, Steve learns later, a very carefully cultivated persona, tactical and expertly constructed. All things are in the crossroads of mainstream and underground where Matthew Murdock operates. 

Steve is twenty-four when he walks into Clinton Church in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. There is no one else there.

“You’re just in time,” the priest says, offering a smile.

“For what?”

“For whatever it is you need.”

Steve thinks his anger is big enough to swallow the world up whole. It must be apparent on his face. “Why do you think I need something?”

“Because you’re here,” the priest says, nodding toward a pew. Steve takes a seat. “And because I’ve been doing this long enough to know.”

It’s impossible to argue with that.

In the present, now, standing in front of a hole-in-the-wall dive bar called _Romanoff’s_ , Steve knows he will pay Clinton Church a visit before the end of the day. He knows he will lay his confessions down. 

Inside, it’s quiet. One woman sits in the back of the room, hunched over her iPhone like it holds information about the second coming of Christ. Two men sit on opposite ends of the bar, drinking whiskey in silence. Football is on— Chelsea vs. Liverpool— but the picture is too grainy to make out the score. If Steve were a betting man, his bet would be on Liverpool. 

A young Black woman is tending the bar; she has a kind of sly look about her, like she knows everything, like she knows her own power. 

“You can’t be more than eighteen,” Steve says, taking a seat at the bar.

“I’m twenty,” the woman says, looking up at Steve through her long lashes. “And I can pour a mean shot of bourbon. You look like you could use one.”

“Is it that obvious?”

The woman smiles. “It’s my job to know.”

“Bourbon it is,” Steve says, slapping a palm down on the bar. It’s barely noon. Steve is not unaware of the fact that he should fake some modicum of embarrassment at the thought of drinking alone during lunchtime on a Thursday, but he doesn’t anyway. Steve isn’t the type to fake truths about himself. He isn’t embarrassed. He has work to do.

The woman slides a shot over. “It’s on the house,” she says.

“No,” Steve shakes his head, and reaches for his wallet. “Let me pay.”

“You can double the tip,” she says boldly, “and I’ll let Natasha know you’re here.”

“Tell me something.” Steve slides a ten-dollar bill across the bar. “How did you know that?”

“I saw your Colt glinting when you sat down. You should really be more careful, vampire hunter. You never know who’s watching.” 

He hides a smile against his shoulder, unwillingly charmed by the bartender’s confidence, the unwavering glow of her. Only twenty and slinging drinks to dirty old men in the beer-soaked night, but she holds her head up like royalty. Steve can see why Nat has hired her. Steve recalls Nat at seventeen, at twenty, at twenty-three—her coolness and her candor. The slight tilt of her head, when she knew you were lying. From what he’s heard, Natasha has only gotten more ruthless and more cunning as the years have passed, a silent cobra lying in wait. He’s missed her. 

When Natasha comes out from the backroom, she’s quiet enough that not a single head turns toward her. It’s a shame. She is the most beautiful woman most people will ever see in their lives. 

“I’m a little hurt,” she says by way of greeting, “that it’s taken you this long to visit.”

“Only been four days, Nat,” Steve says. He pulls her into a hug. “And I had work to do.” 

“I’m sure.”

They sit. The bartender, whom Natasha introduces as Shuri, pours two more shots, and leaves them with the bottle. She disappears into the back. 

“Nice girl,” Steve remarks, shooting his bourbon. 

“Mm, she’s a real catch. Smart, too. Smarter than you and I have the capacity to imagine.”

“And you’ve got her hiding away in here?”

“I’ve got her building,” Natasha says, a sudden sparkle in her eye. “I’ve got her making impossible things.”

“Show me.” 

  
  


***

  
  


The Witch visits on days Bucky can’t sleep.

She has a brother she sits with; she does crosswords on a chair by his coffin. The rumors are that there’s something wrong with her, too. She is the only non-vampire who has ever seen the inside of their coven. 

“I heard you breathing,” she says now, in the doorframe of Bucky’s room. Her hair is dirty and long, and there are flecks of day old mascara on her cheeks. She is still devastatingly beautiful, like a lightning storm. 

“All the way from Pietro’s room?”

“I have a very specific set of skills,” she says dreamily, wandering into the room. “You should be sleeping.”

“I can’t,” Bucky says. He sits up and beckons her closer. If she is afraid of any of them, she doesn’t show it. Bucky doubts that a girl like this is afraid of anything at all, and that’s what makes her so dangerous. Even the King and Queen know it. There’s a brooding, electric darkness in her, and they find themselves drawn to it. Bucky’s drawn to it, too.

“Bad dreams?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just… do vampires get insomnia?”

“You would know better than me.” 

“I don’t really feel like I know anything,” Bucky says. 

“That’s a shame.” The Witch takes a seat on his bed, one leg underneath her. “My brother doesn’t have a bed.”

“Most of them don’t.”

“But you’re special,” she says with a sly smile. Bucky knows she’s protective of her brother— doesn’t know if this embitters her to him. Pietro has been here for longer than he has, but it’s impossible to tell what either of their ages are. Vampirism and witchcraft. And to think he once existed as a high school English teacher. Teaching sixteen year olds the difference between passive and active voice. Convincing them it was still cool to care about plays and Russians. What a life he had, could have had. 

Bucky takes a breath, preparing to defend himself, but she shakes her head. “You don’t need to argue. I know how it works when the Queen chooses you.”

He doesn’t say anything, so she continues. “Pietro doesn’t dislike you, by the way. That’s just the way he is.”

“I didn’t think— ” But that’s a lie, and they both know it. She smiles again. 

“He’s hard to read,” she says.

“Both of you are. Actually, everyone I’ve met since I’ve died is.”

The Witch laughs— a deeply musical sound. Bucky is reluctant to admit how mesmerized he is by her. 

“Maybe you’re looking for tricks where there aren’t any.”

“Now I _know_ that’s not true,” Bucky says, shifting in his seat. He offers her a pillow, and when she takes it, plopping down beside him, suddenly he’s in high school again, having a sleepover, discussing football and boys until the sun comes back up. She catches his eye and grins.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Bucky says. 

“Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“How’s it going to work? You grow old and he doesn’t. You die and suddenly no one’s around to sit around his coffin anymore, keeping his body company.”

“Do I look old to you, Bucky Barnes?” There’s a hint of amusement in her voice. “Careful— we may be friends, but I’m still a lady.” 

Bucky laughs, closing his eyes, settling against the bed frame. “No, what are you, like— twenty-three? Younger than me, at least.”

“That’s sweet,” she says, turning to him. “You’re a sweet, strange man. I should go.”

“Nah, stay awhile.” 

She doesn’t reply.

“Come on,” he says, opening his eyes. “We can— ”

But she’s gone. 

Eventually, he dozes off, and sleeps the unfitful sleep of the undead. In his dreams he is in a deep, dark wood and a witch with golden nails laughs at him from the trees. This witch has Loki’s face and Loki’s laugh; Bucky finds himself dying over and over again. He runs inside the pooling moonlight, feeling hunted and haunted, and he comes to a small alcove made of wood and stone and colored light. Somehow Bucky knows that Loki’s gilt hands can’t find him here in this sacred place where a woman is crying. She holds a baby and the baby is crying, too. It unnerves and distresses him more than the witch chasing him, so Bucky leaves again. He walks into the witch’s open mouth.

In another one he is under water and gills begin to form on his throat and belly. Blinking in the violent blue feels like looking into the sun. His eyes burn. Bucky opens his mouth to scream and new hands reach for him now, tightening around his ankles. He slips— in and out, in and out of them— but the hands find him again eventually. Bucky closes his eyes and there’s a scorching ache enveloping his heart. He lives and he dies. He wakes up.

When night comes, Bucky finds himself in a cold sweat, staring at the ceiling. He realizes belatedly that there is a figure sitting at the foot of his bed. 

“You were afraid,” they say. 

“No— "

“It wasn’t a question. What were you dreaming of?”

“Nothing,” Bucky says, sighing before he can help himself, feeling like a child caught. He sits up.

The Queen quirks an eyebrow; Bucky watches it as his eyes adjust to the dark. 

“What are you doing in my head, anyway?”

“I am not in your head,” the Queen says, the slightest hint of disappointment in their tone. “But it would be in your own interest to be more forthcoming.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Bucky snorts.

The Queen’s eyes narrow. They stand. “Pietro’s been asking for you.” 

“Why?”

“How should I know? More importantly— why should I care?”

“I just— ” Bucky says, too drowsy for the sudden hostility. “I thought he might have said something.”

“Yes. That he was looking for you. I overheard him speaking with Castle, and I thought you might like to know.”

“That was… thoughtful,” Bucky says, slowly. 

“Don’t say I never did anything for you,” they say, and walk away before Bucky can get another word in. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Your sister visits me,” Bucky says.
> 
> “I know.” 
> 
> “Do you mind?”
> 
> Pietro shrugs, a sudden unaffected look drawing his features. “What difference does it make to my sleeping body?”

The club’s name is Ragnarok and it attracts, in Bucky’s humble opinion, the strangest clientele in the city. This is a grand statement— it’s New York City. Still, Bucky thinks that if they had a Yelp page, which of course they do not, “come meet the strangest clientele in the city” would be an apt, honest review. Five stars. Leave with your life if you’re lucky.

Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays are slow as expected, yet there’s always someone for everyone to eat. The rest of the week is full-out, ludicrous and incriminating, blood-soaked debauchery. Thirsty Thursday specials for mortal and vampire alike. 

Pietro is standing in a corner with one thin, sickly-looking model type on each arm, fake-laughing at something one of them says. He catches Bucky’s eye and grins; if this were a cartoon, a perfectly diamond sparkle would flash in the corner of his mouth. This is not a cartoon, but Bucky pictures it anyway. He swallows a sigh of exasperation. Pietro is enough to tire anyone, anywhere, in the shortest amount of time possible. Bucky’s surprised Thor hasn’t had him hanged, drawn, and quartered yet; he assumes it’s Loki’s insistence that stills the King’s hand. And maybe the Witch, too.

They all seem to have a soft spot for her.

Pietro pushes the girl off of him, whispers something into the man’s ear. They leave looking petulant and dissatisfied, like groupies. In the time it takes Bucky to cross the floor, Pietro already has a trickle of blood running down his mouth; he’s licking his fingers. 

“Bucky Barnes,” he says with another intolerable smile. 

“Pietro,” Bucky nods, and leans against the wall next to him. 

“You look hungry.”

“I’m fine."

Pietro gives him the same sly look his sister had only hours ago. His is neither as pleasant nor as playful. His has teeth. Bucky watches the crowd as Pietro cleans himself up and noisily licks his fingers. The DJ plays some senseless neo-goth EDM banger while pale bodies with septum piercings and snake tattoos grind against one another in the neon light. Bucky considers shutting his eyes to it— for just one moment— but forces himself to look, anyway. To look at his life. 

When he turns back toward Pietro, shockingly, there’s concern on his face. 

“I know this isn’t exactly a cake walk,” Pietro says. “It takes a long time to adjust. Sometimes years. But you should take comfort in knowing that you aren’t alone, and you never will be.”

One of the many things they do not explain to you in the How to Function in Your New Life as a Bloodsucking Night Murderer 101 course, which no university offers but really should, is the sudden and inexplicable attachment. Bucky does not particularly like Pietro, but he is drawn to him, and he feels comforted by the mere fact of his existence. It’s nothing like the irritating, uncontrollable draw he feels to Loki, or even— by extension— to Thor; but, it’s a presence nonetheless, palpable and disconcerting, autumn leaves unsettling in his stomach. 

“Your sister visits me,” Bucky says.

“I know.” 

“Do you mind?”

Pietro shrugs, a sudden unaffected look drawing his features. “What difference does it make to my sleeping body?”

“You tell me.”

“She likes lost causes,” Pietro says. He smiles funny. “She thinks she can save us all someday.” 

“She thinks we need saving?”

“Maybe. It’s good that you’re humoring her. I can’t always keep an eye on her.”

Bucky waits.

“I worry about her,” Pietro finally says. “She’s too good. This world doesn’t deserve her goodness. I know that it oppresses and depresses her, and I know that there’s nothing I can do about it save create a new reality for us to live in together. But what reality would that be? What would it look like? Who would come with us? I can’t answer these questions, so I worry.”

Bucky frowns. The DJ has, apparently, taken some sort of downer, because the music slows into a painstaking death grind. A man’s baritone moans over a broken drum machine. 

“Anyway,” PIetro says, before Bucky can form thoughts coherent enough to respond to him, “let’s get you something to drink.” He slaps a hand down on Bucky’s back. “Their Royal Highnesses are out for the night, and I can’t let the Queen’s only pet starve on my watch.”

“Where’d they go?”

“Do you really want to know? Probably fucking in a sewer-turned-opium-den somewhere.” Pietro shrugs. “Biting the heads off of babies. Desecrating a funeral home, maybe.”

“That seems counter-intuitive,” Bucky says. “Why would they go someplace everyone is already dead?”

“You think too much.”

“It was a pretty straightforward thought,” Bucky says, but Pietro is already pulling him toward the bar. 

“Meet someone.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Fine. Then let’s go out.”

At this point it is obvious that protesting won’t help, and he does need, after all, to eat. Just because he doesn’t play with his food beforehand doesn’t mean the scent of blood doesn’t unhinge him. And there’s so much of it inside; so many vampire fuckers who claim they only need _one night_ to convince him to turn them too, that they could be good, that they could build a life of crime and crushed velvet and gore together. None of them want to hear the miserable reality of the lifestyle, how every part of him— even the skin underneath his fingernails— aches for blood. None of them can comprehend the realization that you will never look at the sun again.

The way that burns, too.

It’s raining again; it’s the kind that mists over the city, lays like a sheet over skin. Bucky steps out into the night, and he hunts.

  
  


***

  
  


Clinton Church is quiet when he walks in. A woman cries softly in one of the back pews, hands clasped together. As Steve walks by her, her tears look like jewels. Steve takes a seat toward the front, and waits for the priest. 

Steve is a difficult man, and he is stubborn, and often too overcome in his own convictions to keep his head above water. His morality is like a drowning; it splits his body between law and personal code. Here, small in the stone magnificence of the cathedral, he cannot help but think about God. A disillusioned professor growing old and sloppy in his crowded, 5th floor walk-up. The books and papers strewn about. If Steve were to knock on his door now, would the light still be coming in? Would there be leftover pizza in a cardboard box, grease turning waxy, staining the hardcovers it sat on? Would God look him in the eye?

Would Steve?

Tables of votive candles cast light and shadow along the walls, dim and haunting like silent specters. Statuettes of saints frown down on him. Steve touches the head of his Colt 1911 once— his own rosary— and takes out his phone to text Murdock, who is nowhere in sight. What do priests do when they’re not taking confessions and writing sermons? Steve can’t imagine Murdock having a normal life, a life outside of God and church. He can’t imagine Murdock making coffee in the morning or falling in love. In Steve’s mind, he’s confined to this place, with nothing but the unholy thoughts of unholy people to keep him company. It must be a lonely life. It must be something similar to Steve’s own.

Once he hits send, the doors open behind him, letting the chill of the night air in. Two figures enter in their furs, one blond and one dark, both impossibly pale. By instinct alone Steve is compelled to scoot toward the opposite edge of his pew, shielded by shadow, out of sight. He pulls the lapels of his long, dark coat over his neck, and waits. 

It doesn’t matter. They pass him without a glance— seeming to float rather than take steps— and take a seat in the front, across the way from Steve. Looking at them more carefully, Steve sees that the blond one is taller and more imposing, built like a warrior god. The slighter one, in contrast, looks shrewd and mischievous; they glance around for a moment before resting their head on the other’s shoulder. Neither of them speak.

When the priest comes out, Steve is surprised he approaches them first. Steve is surprised, because he knows how badly his soul needs saving, and how fervently Matthew Murdock wants to be the one to do it. He’s like a dog with a bone, the priest. He could have been a lawyer in another life. Steve watches them talk, though he can’t make any of the words out. This irks him, so he scoots closer, crouched, as low to the ground as possible. They have their backs turned to him, but he’s done this for long enough. He knows what they are.

The smaller one’s laughter echoes out into the cathedral; it sounds like foxes fighting in the night. Both vampires rise together, and Steve watches as Murdock takes their hands in his, one by one. A chilling yawn opens up inside of Steve— knowing what they are and knowing the boy who grew into this man. Knowing Murdock’s father’s battered hands, holding his son tightly by the shoulder in the pew in front of him. Steve at seven, at ten, at sixteen. Matthew at six, and then at nine in a black suit besides his daddy’s oak coffin. Matthew at fifteen, all hollowed out and raging in his blindness. 

As they walk out, the blond puts his arm around his companion. He tilts their head up into the light, stained glass and filtered dust, and kisses them. 

“The Lord is going to smite you,” they say, one hand on his companion’s chest. “He’ll have you burst into flames.”

The blond one smiles. He says: “I’d like to see Him try.”

After they leave— for one, brief moment— Steve makes eye contact with Murdock. Then he stands up, and follows them out.

Outside, the rain mists like a dying thing. Steve follows the scent of them down the block, and into an alley. Because they have rapid, unbelievably heightened senses that have allowed them to survive this long, they know he’s coming. Because they are incredibly self-obsessed creatures, they do not stop what they’re doing to look at him. 

Then. Steve’s hand is on his Colt and Thor’s fist is in his mouth. Faster than any vampire he’s encountered, Steve is taken by surprise, staggers back, a tooth loose somewhere in his jaw. It feels as though his face has opened up, the shock of it blinding him. He hurls a stake out toward the other one with the precision of a gold medalist— only to have it batted away. 

“I wouldn’t do that again,” Thor says. 

Steve grunts something in reply, raises his gun, and shoots. The bullet lodges into Thor’s shoulder. To Steve’s brief, unfamiliar shock, the vampire doesn’t even flinch. Instead, he reaches into the wound, pulls the bullet out, and crushes it in the palm of his hand. He looks peeved. The other one looks downright incensed.

“You idiot,” they hiss. “I just bought him that coat.” 

An icepick is developing in Steve’s right temple. The alley seems to tilt and blur in his vision, prickling with rainwater, basalt and chrome. An underwater feeling. He hasn’t felt this outnumbered since the early days, just starting out, going off his gut and barely any training. Since then he’s taken on seven vampires at once and made it out with barely a scratch. 

Maybe he’s tired. Or maybe they’re just that good.

Steve doesn’t get a chance to consider. Something thumps him on the head again, and the world goes dark. 

He comes to again with Matthew Murdock’s face peering into his, slumped against the alley wall. There’s blood caked on Steve’s lips. The icepick in his head has dulled to a steady, low pounding. 

“Are you alright?” the priest is asking, shaking him gently.

“Am I dead?” Steve asks back. 

“I don’t think so.” 

“Am I— the other thing?”

Murdock straightens up. He manages a smile. “No, Steve, you’re not the other thing, either.” 

“Good,” Steve says, standing up, still shaky. He spits in a black puddle on the ground. “Because if I had a choice, I’d rather be dead.”

“Would you like to come back inside?”

“No, I think I’ll go home.”

“I think you should come in,” Murdock says. “I can smell the blood on you.”

He doesn’t wait to see whether Steve agrees or not, apparently confident that he’ll come. He’s right— Steve does. Weak and unsteady on his feet, Steve focuses on Murdock’s back, outlined in the rain, rather than feeling his own blinding rage. When they step inside the cathedral again, the chill and damp follow them in. Wordlessly, the priest walks toward the apse, and the vampire hunter follows. 

There’s a bowl of holy water on a table next to an altar to the Virgin Mary. Murdock flicks three fingers into it.

“I’m a little over being blessed right now,” Steve mutters, and Murdock looks toward him sharply. 

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” the priest says, rubbing the blood off of Steve’s jaw and mouth with the holy water, “because I have no intention of blessing you.” 

“This feels sacrilegious.” 

“Mm.”

A moment passes. Murdock gestures at the altar. “Do you know what this is?”

“The Virgin?”

“ _Theotokos_ ,” Murdock nods. “Mother of God.”

“Great.”

“And do you know what she represents, Steve?”

“Uh,” Steve says, making a face he knows Murdock can’t see. “Immaculate conception?” 

“She means different things to different people,” the priest continues, unfazed by Steve’s levity. “When I think of her, I feel the strength of my devotion, and I remember to have faith.”

“Right.” 

“She reminds me also that there is salvation and redemption for all of God’s creatures.”

“Even vampires,” Steve states, crossing his arms.

Murdock looks him right in the eyes. “I was talking about you,” he says.

Steve snorts. The candles around them flicker, casting horrible shadows on the walls. A church could eat you up, Steve knows, if you let it. His arms tighten around his body.

“I’m not the one that needs saving. And those things out there? The ones you let into your church? They’re not capable of being saved, Father.”

A ghost of a smile touches Murdock’s face. “It’s been a long time since you’ve called me that.”

“Force of habit,” Steve says, and immediately feels a tinge of regret. “Tell me what they were doing here.”

“You ought to get ice for your head.”

“Later,” Steve waves a hand dismissively. “Tell me about them. Who were they? What did they want? I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“They come here often,” the priest says, finally taking a seat. Steve remains standing. “They’re ancient ones— much older than even this country, and older still than you and I have any capability of understanding.”

“The older a vampire is, the harder they are to kill.”

“I wouldn’t try it with these ones.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Would you try it with any of them?”

“Me, personally?” Murdock shrugs. “Maybe in another life. In this one, I’m a man of peace.”

“There’s no peace while they exist,” Steve says, surprised at the heat in his voice.

“There will never be peace for you,” Murdock counters, “while you cling to your grievances.”

“They killed my mother.”

“Not these ones.”

“They’re all the same.”

“No,” Murdock says, stern now for the first time. “They aren’t. And while I don’t condone the path you’ve chosen to take, I will tell you that if your goal is to seek vengeance on the ones that killed your mother, you’re going to have to make strategic allies— soon. Those two could have left you for dead, but they didn’t. That isn’t how they operate. And because I have known you for most of my life, and because I have great love for you, I suggest that you seek them out, and you play by their rules.”

It’s almost too much. Steve throws his head back and laughs. “You want me to work _with_ vampires?”

“I don’t want you to do any of this.”

“But?”

“Vampires exist, Steve. One man can’t possibly destroy them all. I believe that accomplishing the goal you set out to do 10 years ago may bring you a temporary satisfaction, but it won’t compare to the freedom you’ll feel when you realize that man and vampire can live together in harmony.”

Another long moment passed between them. Steve thought, _if this were any other man standing before me, I would laugh in his face, and I would walk away._ But what Murdock said was true; they had known one another for most of their lives, and there was true friendship between them. Steve was many things. He was not disrespectful. 

“They eat us, Matt.”

“We eat birds. We hunt deer. We still exist among them.”

“That’s not the same, and you know it.”

“I think you struggle because you’re no longer on the top of the food chain,” Murdock nods. “I struggle, too. But I try to accept, and to move forward, and to live with forgiveness in my heart.”

“I’m not a _fucking_ spiritual leader,” Steve seethes, and all the candles seem to flicker at once. The Virgin Mary glares at him from her altar, sardonic and disgusted. 

“Sorry,” Steve says blandly, looking up and suppressing a sacrilegious eyeroll. “Sorry, God.”

Murdock sighs, quiet and restrained. He watches Steve without seeing him, and so sees him best of all.   
  
“Their names are Thor and Loki,” he finally says, and stands. “When it comes to vampires in this city, there are far worse ones than those two. Go to Ragnarok. Be respectful. Don’t bring your Colt.”

“What makes you think they’ll even let me in?”

Murdock smiles. It’s slow and cat-like, like pouring honey. “Have faith,” he says.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve’s first impression is that vampires have no style. As it’s a comment made by a man who wore cargo pants for the better half of his twenties, it has no merit. Still. He barely looks out of place at Ragnarok. It’s been over a week since his last shave and he’s fairly sure the last time he showered was “not recently enough.” There are bags under his eyes, and in the long, black coat he all but lives in, Steve Rogers almost fits in. 

The wound heals fast but Loki fusses over it anyway. 

They check— first every hour, then every other. It has been a long time since either of them have been that close to danger, no matter how minimal, and Loki holds a very special paranoia in their heart for Thor-shaped purposes. His body chemistry could have changed. They could have gotten weaker with time. The bullet could have been dipped in something as ancient and sacred as themselves.

The possibilities are endless, Loki knows, and Thor knows, because Loki won’t shut up about them. 

“Did it ever occur to you,” the Queen says, lounging on their bed, “that I may just like having your shirt off twelve times a night?” They’re in a floor-length Salvatore Ferragamo gown, black and slinky, two long slits coming up to the thigh on both sides. The neckline plunges. 

“You could just request that,” Thor counters, “rather than have me dress and undress.” 

“I enjoy watching your arms pull the sleeves away.” 

“Why don’t I undress you for a change?”

Loki’s teeth graze their lower lip for a moment, watching, before they sit up straight. “No. Come here. On your knees.” 

Thor shucks his shirt off then kneels at Loki’s feet, between their legs. He kisses their bare chest, right where the gauzy fabric begins. 

“Don’t distract me,” they say sharply, their eyes on the wound. It’s closed up already, the flesh pale, nearly perfect, but Loki knows it’s there. They press a finger to it and their gaze flickers up to Thor’s face for any sign of pain. There is none. They press the finger down harder. “Well?”

“Nothing,” Thor says. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“I never worry,” Loki says, and they both know they’re lying. Thor cannot help but think of them at the beginning— blood-soaked and vengeful, a ravenous, angry thing with the face of a Botticellian angel. Putting a knife in the heart of the woman who turned Thor. Snapping her neck. Burning her body.

“Why?” Thor had asked after, phantom eye still throbbing in the empty socket.

“I didn’t like the way she treated you.” 

Thor had laughed. He remembers this now, the bewilderment of it, of having someone so much slighter stand up for him— of having someone stand up for him. 

“How should I be treated?” 

Loki had reached up then, brushing their lips against Thor’s cheek. “Like a king,” they whispered.

Now, watching their razor focus on his shoulder, Thor feels a surge of the same bewilderment— and something else. Something that was not there on that first day. Love seems too simple a word for it.

“Loki,” he says, meeting their eyes. 

“I’m just making sure.”

“I know.” He takes Loki’s hand in his, and kisses it. “Thank you.” 

Loki does not seem satisfied, though they rarely do. “Are your knees aching yet?”

“No.”

“Good,” Loki says, spreading their legs a little further. “Then get to work.” 

**loki lounging by inflomora**

***

Steve’s first impression is that vampires have no style. As it’s a comment made by a man who wore cargo pants for the better half of his twenties, it has no merit. Still. He barely looks out of place at Ragnarok. It’s been over a week since his last shave and he’s fairly sure the last time he showered was “not recently enough.” There are bags under his eyes, and in the long, black coat he all but lives in, Steve Rogers almost fits in. 

Except for the fact that it’s barely past 10pm, and Steve realizes too late that no one in the city parties before midnight. The DJ blasts some Apoptygma track from the early 2000s to an empty dance floor, and Steve takes a seat at the bar. 

“Whiskey,” he says to the bartender, a gruff looking man wearing a shirt with a skull on it. 

“Another,” he says, after taking the shot. 

The bartender, who hasn’t said a word, pours him another. 

Steve shoots it back and says, “I think this is around the time you ask me if something’s wrong.”

The bartender looks at him. “I don’t care if something’s wrong,” he says. 

Steve can’t help but laugh. He tips him a $20. “Why don’t you tell me where I can find a man named Thor, then?”

Skull Shirt looks from the bill to Steve’s face, then shoves the money into his back pocket.  
  
“Another shot?” he asks. 

“Just a hint. Tell me if I’m warm, sitting here.”

“Oh, you’re warm, alright,” the bartender says, flashing him a smile. It isn’t friendly. “You’re real warm, and all of us can smell it.” 

“Hey,” Steve shrugs. “I’m just here to have a drink and relax, like everybody else.”

“And ask questions.”

“Is he a private person?”

The bartender turns away. The club begins to fill slowly, leather-clad patrons taking seats around the bar and in the plush red booths around the dance floor. Steve notes a VIP section and what he can only assume are private rooms down a long corridor to the left of the bar. Everything is black or red, neon and white light splashed against the stone walls. Gauzy black curtains separate various rooms from one another and chandeliers of various sizes hang off of the ceiling. Stone faces emerge from stone pillars, vicious and mocking. They all have sharp teeth.

“Come on,” Steve insists, raising his voice. “Don’t you want to know who I am?”

“No,” the bartender says. 

“Another shot, then.”

“Make that two,” comes a low voice beside Steve. He’s only shorter by an inch, dark hair pulled back into a bun. He’s almost too quiet— too mournful. When he finally looks up, his eyes are like empty glasses, windows shuttering in the night. 

“You should go,” the man says without looking at Steve. 

Steve focuses on Skull Shirt and speaks out of the corner of his mouth. “Why is that?”

“Frank doesn’t like strangers,” he indicates the bartender. “No one here does.”

“That’s funny, I thought I came to a public establishment.” 

“I think,” the man says, finally looking at Steve, “you know exactly where you came.”

There’s a pause. He’s clearly a vampire, but he doesn’t seem to have the edge the others around here do. He reminds Steve, in a way, of Sam— who has tried and succeeded in holding onto his humanity and dignity as a person. Who is still very much a _person_. But there’s no one like Sam, Steve knows. Everyone else is just a trick of the light. 

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The man, to Steve’s surprise, looks neither angry nor annoyed, but thoroughly disappointed. 

“Suit yourself,” he says. He sips half of his shot, hyper-focused on it, like it might get up and walk away. 

Steve opens his mouth to make a joke, but his companion is quicker.

“I just think you’re making a mistake,” he says. “I think you’d be better off back in Houston.” 

“What do you know about Houston?”

“I know that’s where you made your name.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. 

“I know a lot about you,” the man nods. “That you’re a vampire hunter. That you have a bad temper. You killed those ferals in Battery Park without even blinking, and then walked away like it was nothing to you.”

“It was nothing to me,” Steve agrees.

“I don’t think so. I think this is everything to you.”

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Steve says, “that you know so much about me, and I don’t know anything about you.”

“It seems like a personal oversight.” 

Steve laughs at that. “You might be right.”

“I could kill you,” the vampire says darkly. Steve gets the impression that this is more for show than it is genuine. Like he’s trying to scare him away. “It would be quick and no one would bat an eye. Accidents happen a lot here.” 

“Why don’t you tell me your name first? We’ve sat here sharing a drink. I think I deserve to know the name of the man who may or may not kill me.”

“Oh,” the man who may or may not kill Steve says, and gives him a lopsided smile. “It’s Bucky.”

“Well, Bucky,” Steve says, turning fully toward him. “I’m not going anywhere. And I think if you really wanted to kill me, you’d have tried it already.”

“Maybe I wanted a drink first.”

“I didn’t think whiskey was really your style.”

“It’s not,” Bucky wrinkles his nose. “It tastes… so much worse than it did in life. But it helps me feel normal, somehow.” 

Steve finds he can’t decide whether this is a genuine show of vulnerability or a bluff. Vampires are cunning and methodical; they will stop at nothing to get exactly what they want. _This_ vampire seems to know too much about him; he’s taken Steve off guard in a situation where to do so could mean the difference between life and death. But the thing is, Steve doesn’t feel threatened. It isn’t overconfidence. Steve doesn’t feel threatened, because Bucky the Vampire has all the threatening aura of a sad dog huffing his head down on a table. The bags under both of their eyes match. He looks lonely. 

“What else do you do?”

“Hm?”

“To feel normal.”

Bucky drinks the other half of his shot, looking mildly like he’s just swallowed straight mayonnaise. “I sleep in a bed.”

“Wait,” Steve says, laughing. “You guys actually sleep in coffins?”

“Don’t disrespect my culture,” Bucky says with a frown. “It’s bad enough that I’m legally obligated to only wear black.” 

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“I mean, I think between you and me— I’m probably the one that’s damned.”

“No, it’s just,” Steve says. “I’ve never met a vampire with a sense of humor.”

“That’s a bold assumption. Maybe you just jump the gun to the murdering bit.” 

“That’s possible. I try to keep the conversations nonexistent.”

“That seems cruel,” Bucky says, signaling for another shot.

“Not as cruel as a guy torturing himself with liquor.”

“You wanna offer me something better?” Bucky smiles, showing his very sharp teeth. 

The room is full now, men and women in slinky dresses and dark cocktails on both sides of them. For a brief moment, Steve envies their relentless ignorance. He watches Skull Shirt— Frank— pull down a bottle of dark liquor and pour a double for Bucky. He listens to the vapid conversations around him, all wrapped up in sex and blood and violence, and remembers he has a reason for being here. A higher purpose. 

“Maybe,” Steve says, leaning in. He licks his lips. “Tell me something first.”

“What?”

“Where can I find Thor?”

“Right here,” a woman’s voice says, sharp nails tightening on Steve’s shoulder. He looks up to see a dark-skinned woman with soft features and sharp eyes glaring back at him. “Come with me.”

“I’m in the middle of a conversation,” Steve says, and the woman’s grip begins to bruise.

“I won’t repeat myself, hunter.” 

“Val, come on,” Bucky says, taking the shot Frank has poured him. Steve belatedly realizes it isn’t liquor at all. 

“I don’t remember addressing you,” Val says.

“Why do you have to be like that? We’re trying to keep things civil.”

“ _He_ is trying to destroy our kind. And _you_ are useless at this— it’s like watching a fish drown. Loki trusts you far too much, if you ask me.”

“Nobody asked you,” Bucky mumbles. “I was doing fine.”

“You were taking too long.”

“What?” Steve asks, intelligently.

“They want to see you,” Val says, examining her nails. “Both of them. Isn’t that what you came for?”

***

The private room is— shockingly— beautiful. There’s a separate bar stocked with bottle after bottle of what Steve can only assume is not wine and intricately carved candelabras on the bartop. There are plush sofa chairs around long, well-made coffee tables covered in expensive tchotchkes and crimson carpeted floors. And in a corner booth wearing a long, burgundy velvet coat, is the blond vampire Steve shot outside the church. 

They look at one another. The vampire smiles. 

“Sit,” Thor says. He does not break eye contact, although they are both acutely aware that Steve’s hand is lingering steadily over the holster of his gun. 

“I think I’ll stand.” 

“It wasn’t a suggestion.”

From his peripheral Steve notices one figure in each corner of the room, shifting into sight where no figures were before. He wonders, briefly, if he’s losing his touch. If something about the city, about Sam, about the memories trailing him like bitter ghosts, has made him careless somehow. Steve is very, very good at what he does— but he isn’t good enough to fight off five vampires at once without an ambush advantage. 

“If you’re going to kill me, you might as well just kill me. I’m not one for long-winded villain speeches.”

“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” Thor shrugs. “Sit.” 

Reluctantly, Steve takes slides into the booth, opposite Thor. He sets his hands on the table, palms down, and he waits. 

“I have to be honest,” Thor says, “not a lot of men come looking for me. I’m flattered. A little angry, still, from the time that you shot me— but flattered.” He smiles again. He’s not entirely Steve’s type, but still. Steve isn’t an idiot. The vampire is absurdly beautiful, like a god from an ancient world. But there’s only one God, Steve knows, and there’s nothing beautiful about Him. 

“I wouldn’t take it personally,” Steve says. 

“Is there anything more personal than death?”

“Life,” Steve says. “I guess you wouldn’t know much about that.”

To his surprise, Thor looks thoughtful. “It _has_ been a very long time, but there’s life in this existence, too. We’re not as different as you want to believe.” 

“I doubt that.” 

“I have a feeling you’re going to be a contrarian no matter what I say.” 

Steve sets his jaw; he doesn’t say anything. 

“Why don’t you tell me what you want,” Thor suggests.

“What were you doing at Clinton Church?” Steve asks. “What do you want with Matthew Murdock?”

“It had been too long since my last confession.” 

Steve laughs and it’s a bitter, hollow sound. Like a hole in the dirt— big enough for a body. Thor tilts his head and gives Steve an almost inquisitive look. 

“You don’t believe we have feelings,” he says. 

Again, Steve doesn’t say anything.

“And you don’t believe we have the capacity to love or grieve or experience guilt. I wonder,” Thor says, leaning in now, “if you truly feel that way, or if it just makes your job easier to view us as heartless monsters. Perhaps you need the priest more than I do.” 

“You can’t possibly expect me to believe you’re religious.”

“I am many things,” Thor says. “But I don’t expect anything of you.”

“Murdock is an old friend,” Steve says. 

“I gathered.”

“If anything happens to him— if _any_ harm comes to him— ”

“You’ll what?” Thor interrupts. “Swing a fist? Shoot? I have been here longer than firearms and longer than churches. There is no part of your fragile, unmemorable body that I can’t disintegrate between two fingers.” He pauses. “Not to mention, I am quite fond of Murdock.”

“Excuse me if I don’t put any faith in your fondness,” Steve says. 

“As you wish. Is that all you wanted? To discuss Matthew Murdock?”

It’s evident that Thor knows there’s more. A tendon in Steve’s jaw clenches. 

“No,” he finally says. “I’m prepared to call a truce.” 

"Why?"

"I don't like being followed around," Steve says, indicating Bucky. "And you already know I'm here. By now, you've probably caught my scent— you'll know where I live, who my friends are, what places I frequent. You're better organized than many of the other groups I've encountered, and I don't think you're going to let me do my job for much longer. So a truce. For now."

“I didn’t realize we were at war," Thor says.

“We’re always at war,” Steve says. It’s honest, at least. “Even if I can’t get to you, I’ll get to the others in your coven. I’ll come around again and again, until I knock every single one of them out. Or until you stop me, I guess. But— I’m willing to wait.”

"Again, I'd have to ask why."

"This isn't a long life," Steve shrugs. "I'm aware of that. Sooner or later, I'll die by a vampire's hand. I'd just like more time to knock more of you out before then."

“You’re prepared to die for your worthless cause, then.” Steve notices, suddenly, the dark-haired vampire from the church standing over them. Their features are rigid and haughty in the warm glow of the room— there’s no trace of laughter left on their face. Still angry, then. Steve looks from Loki to Thor as Loki takes a seat on Thor’s lap. 

“There is nothing I can do that is more important or worthwhile than this,” Steve says. 

“What a shame,” Loki drawls, looking Steve right in the eyes. “You have talent, but you’re clearly deranged. I’ve forgotten how easily humans are drawn to madness.” 

“Let’s be honest with one another,” Thor says. “You’ve made your intentions clear. You’ve threatened my family. Why would I let you walk out of here?”

“I don’t know,” Steve shrugs. “But you’ve already shown your hand. Like you said, if you wanted me dead, I’d be dead already. You want something from me, too.” 

The vampires look at one another.

“Tell me what it is, or I’ll walk away.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Loki laughs. “Do you really think we’ll let you walk out of here without agreeing to our demands?”

“Loki,” Thor says.

“What.” Loki shifts in his lap. “Am I wrong? I dare you to tell me I’m wrong.” 

“I was going to tell you there’s no reason to be so hostile.”

“Am I the only one here who remembers this man shot you? And all of you,” they say, looking at the shifting shadows around the room, “letting him get away with it. Knowing he’ll come for you too.” 

“If this is how you want to do this,” Steve says, his hand on his Colt, “let’s get on with it.” 

“No,” Thor says, and Loki and all of the shadows in the room stop moving. “I accept your truce.”

For the second time, Steve sets both hands on the table. “You must really need my help.”

“I do need help,” Thor concedes. “I heard a saying recently about the enemy of my enemy— and there you were. Like divine intervention.” He smiles. “Do you know that saying, Steve Rogers?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“And do you know that vampires killing other vampires is generally looked down upon?”

“You kill one another all the time,” Steve says. “I’ve seen it myself.”

“You’ve seen ferals and dysfunctional families parading around as covens. Vampires who have no concept of structure or survival, who will come and go unnoticed by time and history— nameless and unmemorable. Those of us who have decided to endure have also decided to live according to a certain set of rules.”

“Vampire law.”

“Except we don’t twist and break the law to further our personal agendas the way humans do.” 

Loki raises an eyebrow at that, but doesn’t speak. Instead, they begin filing their nails. 

“Anyway,” Thor continues. “This is what I need you for.” 

“To break your laws?”

“To do your job. To hunt vampires.” 

“I do that already,” Steve says, unimpressed. “I don’t really need your blessing.”

“But you need my information,” Thor says. “Your tactics are mediocre, at best— better suited for the dwindling populations of the south and handfuls of ferals. You can’t just walk around Manhattan and hope to get us all.” 

“It’s been working so far.”

“Oh, yes, I can really see your impact on us.”

“What’s your problem with these other vampires?” Steve asks. “Why do you want them dead enough that you’d let me walk out of here?”

“I don’t like competition,” Thor says. It sounds simple enough, and Steve doesn’t buy it for a minute. Loki must see it on his face, because they decide to speak up again.

“Thor’s masculinity is very fragile,” they say. “Like a glass sculpture. A beautiful, tall glass sculpture with a huge co— _ow_.” Thor pinches them. 

“We’ll talk about this later,” Thor says to them.

“In public, I hope. With an audience.”

“Alright, enough,” Steve interjects. “I’m leaving.”

“You are impatient and ungrateful,” Loki spits out. “You should be on your hands and knees in front of Thor, thanking him for this opportunity, showing him your appreciation in a way that I can watch and then disembowel you for.”

“There is something truly wrong with you,” Thor says, almost lovingly.

“Thank you,” Loki says, and tilts their head so Thor can kiss their cheek. 

“How do you two get anything done?” Steve asks, seriously. “I need to know how even the most basic administrative task happens despite— all of this.” 

“Luckily, we have all the time in the world,” Thor says. “Like I said, I don’t like competition, and there are vampires out there who do not play by any of our rules. They don’t abide by our laws, and their way of living threatens our very existence, long-term. If I were to strike first, I would be seen as a hypocrite. But not all vampires know what’s good for them, and I believe we need to act, now.”

“So you’re making this decision on behalf of every other vampire in this city.” 

“That’s what being King means.”

“Say I do this for you,” Steve says. “Say I let you choose the vampires I hunt, and in what order. What do I get in return?”

“In return, I’ll give you what you really wanted when you came looking for me.”

Steve looks at him.

“The name of the vampires who killed your mother.” 

Very carefully, Steve folds his expression up behind a waxy stillness. He does not flinch, nor move, nor tremble; in fact, his only reaction is the slightest clench of the jaw, which Thor notices and does not care to comment on. There’s no need. The King knows he has won. If there was a point where Steve felt he possessed the willpower to refuse Thor’s offer, they are well beyond it now. 

And what Steve resigns himself to, with as little feeling as possible, is this: he will hunt the vampires the Coven wants hunted, he will hunt the vampires who murdered Sarah Rogers, and he will come back to Ragnarok to finish the job he started in an alley outside a cathedral in Hell’s Kitchen. 

If there were an alternative— a way for Steve to avenge his mother without signing a long-term deal with the devil— he would take it. If he had time and free reign of Ragnarok, if he could go through the cache in Thor’s mind and find those names, if he had just been there, older, stronger, the night of her death. Sitting at a table now so far from her life Steve can smell citrus and honey. He can see her smile and hear her voice— his only home even after all the years. Would she be proud of him, now, looking into the jaws of the beast and willingly stepping in? If there were an alternative, he would cling to it like a raft. 

Then the King presents it to him.

“Why don’t we start with a test run?” Thor suggests. “I’ll give you a name, you see how it feels, we’ll go from there. I have no doubt your work will become easier with my help.” 

“You give me a name, _one_ name, and I’ll check it out for myself,” Steve counters. “If you’re not lying to me, and all goes well— meaning, a vampire dies at my hand— you’ll give me the names I really want, and we’ll go from there.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. My one request for your— what was it? Four? Five?”

“That’s my offer,” Steve says. 

“You’re picky, for a vampire hunter.”

“I just don’t trust you.”

Thor sighs into Loki’s shoulder and all at once looks like a normal man conducting an inconvenient business transaction instead of the centuries-old bloodthirsty murderer he is. “Very well,” he says, and dismisses Steve rather unceremoniously. 

After Val shows the vampire hunter out, Bucky takes a seat across from the amorphous form of Thor-Loki.

“I didn’t know you were so religious.”

Thor laughs, loudly, making Loki flinch then scowl. He only stops when he sees that Bucky is serious. 

“Oh,” Thor says. “I forgot how absurd children can be. But... I suppose you were born yesterday.” 

“I’ve been here a year,” Bucky says, slowly. “I’m thirty-two.” 

Thor and Loki exchange a glance that translates clearly as _that’s what I said_ and _that’s exactly what you just said_ , respectively. Bucky sighs, feeling— as he has felt every night since his Turning— in way over his head. 

“Is there something,” he begins, but Loki quickly interrupts.

“Yes. Follow him.” 

***

The night is so clear when Steve leaves Ragnarok that he doesn’t notice the woman coming in— walks right into her.

“Oh,” she says, smiling instead of yelling. “Sorry.”

“Completely my mistake,” Steve says, putting his hands up. The full moon stares him down; it’s God on a mean streak. He looks at the woman again and her hair is moonglow. “I hate to sound like a dick,” he says quickly.

“I’d hate if you were a dick,” she replies smoothly.

“But it’s ugly in there. And you— you’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

She smiles. “Because I’m alive?”

Steve studies her more carefully. He’d been to cities where the existence of vampirism is still an underground secret, and he’d been to cities where it is known, feared, and shunned. But this— _popularity_ , this _embrace_ , he has never seen before. Only in New York. The woman before him is young and pretty like many of the men and women inside, but she doesn’t exude the same desperation the groupies do. She’s dressed like a lawyer or a journalist, blonde hair swept back out of her face. 

“Because you’re alive,” Steve nods. “Because you can turn away, right now, and never involve yourself in this mess.”

“You’re a hero, huh?”

“No ma’am.”

Her eyes glimmer in the night. Her smile is disarming. “I’ve got protection. Can you say the same?”

“I _am_ the protection,” Steve says, earning the sound of her laughter. 

She shakes her head. “Everywhere I go I’m surrounded by tough guys.”

“I promise I’m not trying to be that guy.”

“I’ll forgive you just this once.”

Steve smiles, nearly sheepish, too stubborn in his convictions to be entirely so. “Hey, you have a nice night, okay? Miss…?”

“Page,” the woman says, smiling again. “It’s Karen Page.”  
  
She walks in without a second glance, and Steve watches the back of her glossy hair disappear into the dismal boom of the club. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I wasn’t trying to trick you. I was trying to feel you out.”
> 
> Steve leans in. “I didn’t like it,” he says, quietly. 
> 
> For the second time, Bucky mirrors his movements, playing every part the shadow, leaning in as well. “I think you did,” he responds.

“You’re being followed,” Sam says, a week later. 

“I know.”

They’re sitting with their feet dangling off the fire escape moments after sundown, the night dewy and tinged with possibilities. It will, of course, darken, cloud, and open up. It always opens up— you’d think you were in England. Steve wonders what his life would be like, if he were in England. 

“He can’t be much older than me. A few months, maybe,” Sam says. It takes Steve a moment to realize Sam is talking about his vampirism and not his actual age. He turns toward his friend.

“How can you tell?”

“He’s not that good,” Sam says, sounding almost apologetic. “I mean, if there was a heavy hitter after you— a King or a Queen— even one of their admirals, you’d never know it.”

“I don’t understand,” Steve says. “I’ve been doing this for over ten years now. If they’re so good, why haven’t I been stopped? Why hasn’t an ancient one cornered me somewhere, broken my neck?”

“You’ve been doing this for over ten years and you don’t know the first thing about vampires, Steve.”

“Not true. I know at least fifteen ways to kill one.” 

Sam laughs and shakes his head, looking the way he always does: like he knows everything. “It’s different out here, man. The _Coven_ is different. And they don’t just kill humans because they can; they kill humans if they _have_ to. Now, I’m not trying to offend you— I know you’re proud of the work you do. But they don’t exactly see you as a threat.”

“They will.” 

“Steve,” Sam says, and he repositions himself so that he’s facing Steve completely, legs crossed underneath him. “A truce with a coven isn’t something you can take lightly. If you go back on your word, they won’t just come after you. They’ll come after everyone and everything you love.” 

“I’m not going back on my word,” Steve says, frowning. “You have to trust that I’d never put you in danger.”

“I trust that. I trust you. But I feel like you’re not taking this nearly as seriously as you should. And did I mention you’re being followed?”

“Yeah.” Instinctively, both men turn outward again, at the rooftop across the street and the glowing pair of eyes looking right at them. Steve sighs. “How do you think I should handle this?”

“There’s a place you can go. A diner around Meatpacking. It’s… sort of a no man’s land for vampires and humans. You can make truces there, or negotiate a deal without having to worry for your life. _Either_ of your lives.”

The thought of this, for Steve, is highly disturbing. “What’s it called?” he asks.

“No Man’s Land.”

“Great.” 

Neither of them say anything for a moment, too distracted with their own, private thoughts. Finally, Sam stands, brushing himself off.

“Gotta go,” he says.

“Hot date?”

“I’m meeting Riley.” A pause. “So— maybe.”

“Wait,” Steve says, brain briefly emptied of destroying vampires and overflowing completely with the thought of his best friend’s happiness. “Really? Tell me more. Tell me everything. Tell me anything.”

Slowly, and for the first time in a long time, Sam smiles. “Later. I don’t want to keep him waiting. But we’ll talk in the morning, okay? Promise. Until then, go to No Man’s. See what your shadow wants.” 

_Fair enough_ , Steve thinks, after Sam has left. _Let’s see what the shadow wants_. 

***

On the corner of Washington and Gansevoort— past the twenty-something year old influencers, the late-night coke dealers, the frat boys in huddles, and the slimy, cheating businessmen— sits an unassuming, eggshell-colored diner. A cursive sign flashes neon through the rain-hued night. And Steve Rogers, vampire hunter, turns the lapels of his trench up to his ears and ducks inside.

No Man’s Land.

There’s a bored looking kid behind the counter who nods at him as he takes a booth by the window. 

“What’ll it be?” the kid asks, popping his gum. Steve reads the nametag on his shirt: _Peter_. 

He says: “Just coffee.”

“‘Kay,” the kid says, and Steve redirects his gaze out the window. It is undoubtedly the first rule of vampire hunting to be prepared and it is undoubtedly the second rule of vampire hunting to always have a plan. Steve has broken two rules, on a whim, listening to Sam; in truth, Steve has broken far more, and he would do it again, do it one hundred times over, for Sam. But that’s what trust is, and though Steve has lived a life of adventure, danger, and suspense— it has also been a life filled to the brim with loneliness, overflowing with it. There has to be trust still, somewhere. 

The door opens behind him, bell chiming like a warning, and Steve breaks another rule. He does not glance over his shoulder. He does not show interest, or move at all. Instead, he thanks the kid for bringing him his coffee, and looks into it, waiting. 

There is a moment when, out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees Thor. But it is only a flicker, and then it is gone.

Time passes. A man can only wait so long. Steve peers into the reflection of the window, hazy focus deflecting rainwater and streetlight, and watches the silhouette of the newcomer, sitting at the counter, hunched over their own mug of coffee. Frowning, he lets his mind wander over the events of the week— the days recoiling from him like he’s a monster, too. Steve sleeps in snatches during odd hours, preferring to put his time to better use, to plan and to hunt. The bags under his eyes have grown. 

No one ever said it would be a long life, or a good one. 

Steve can’t remember when he last ate, so he orders fries, but they grow cold in front of him, grease coagulating at the bottom of the bowl. Couples laugh, drunk and cheerful despite the rain, hanging onto one another on the street. It’s a lonely life too, Steve remembers. 

Before he registers the sound of the bell again, someone slides into his booth. The man from the club— Bucky— almost charming in his strangeness— wearing a short, felt top hat and dark sunglasses. 

“What,” Steve begins, and stops.

“What?”

“Why do you look like that?”

Bucky’s brows furrow; he points to the hat in question, as though Steve could possibly be talking about anything else. 

“My disguise,” Bucky explains, and snatches a fry from the plate. “Do you like it?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Did you want something?” Steve asks, pushing the plate toward the vampire. He’s certain he’s never encountered a vampire who eats french fries before, but then again Steve is certain he’s never encountered a vampire he let live long enough to get to know before, either. 

“You said you wanted to meet.”

“When did I say that?”

“Earlier,” Bucky says, taking off his ridiculous sunglasses. “On the fire escape.”

Steve frowns. Bucky frowns too— whether he’s mocking him or not, Steve can’t tell.

“What?” 

“‘ _He’s not very good_ ,’” Bucky quotes, taking another fry. “‘ _If there was a heavy hitter after you, you’d never know it_.’”

“You heard that?”

“I have heightened senses. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I wasn’t even the one who said it,” Steve says, making a face. “And weren’t you the one trying to trick me at the bar?”

“I wasn’t trying to trick you. I was trying to feel you out.”

Steve leans in. “I didn’t like it,” he says, quietly. 

For the second time, Bucky mirrors his movements, playing every part the shadow, leaning in as well. “I think you did,” he responds.

“What do you want?” Steve asks, sitting back. “Why are you following me?”

“I’m under orders.”

“From Thor.”

“They’re… sort of a unit, but sure. Yes. From both of them. The thing is,” Bucky switches gears, looking slightly incensed, “I _am_ very good. You only noticed me because I wanted you to.”

“Sure,” Steve snorts. “Whatever you say.”

“You didn’t see me at the park.” 

“You weren’t at the park.”

“How would I have known about the park if I hadn’t been at the park?” Bucky asks, furrowing his brow. He looks like a disgruntled mid-19th century showman in his long, black coat and stupid disguise hat. Steve sighs.

“Someone must have told you. Thor or Loki.”

“You think they’re the only vampires in our coven that are good at being vampires?”

“I don’t think of you,” Steve says. “Not as individuals. Not as people with meaningful skill sets. My only, singular aspiration is to kill as many of you as I can with the limited life that I have.”

“Woah,” Bucky says, gnawing on a fry. “That’s bleak.”

Steve pauses. He thinks that if life were a Shakespearean tragedy, this guy would be the comic relief right in the middle of the play— a drunk porter, a grave-digger, swept in to bring the audience back into the sunlight. But life is _not_ Shakespeare, and Steve hasn’t seen the sun in weeks. 

“I don’t get it,” he finally says. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s _wrong_ with me?” Bucky laughs. “Up until one year ago, my biggest concern was whether I could finish grading all the papers I put off until last minute. I got hangovers after three beers, because I was _thirty-two_ and my body suddenly decided it had had enough. And then I got— I mean _now_ , all of that seems so ridiculous. Like I— I literally have to _drink blood_ if I want to survive. It’s gross. I can hear what people are saying across the street, and everything is so clear all the time that it’s disorienting. Potentially, I will outlive every single student I’ve ever had. I’ll never feel daylight again, or warm sand on a beach, traveling long distances by plane is almost impossible, and I’m hungry _all_ the time. Not just like— I want a burrito, but like… empty. Just really fucking pathetically empty.” 

He takes a moment to squirt far too much ketchup on Steve’s plate, swivel a fry in it, and thoughtfully, quietly, eat.

“So when you say,” Bucky continues, “that your only goal in life is to eradicate us, or whatever, when you could be living the kind of life where your biggest problem is your next office deadline, and enjoying the sun on your face, and taking two weeks off every year to go to Cancun— that’s fucking bleak. I think the real question is, what’s wrong with _you_?”

Steve frowns. For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t say anything only because he doesn’t have anything to say. 

“You frown a lot,” Bucky says. “You’ll get wrinkles.”

“Do those even do anything for you?” Steve asks, indicating the plate of fries.

“I mean, nutritionally? No. If all I ate were fries, I’d die. But then again, so would you eventually. Spiritually, though...”

“But the taste of whiskey made you gag.”

“The taste of whiskey made me gag when I was human, too.”

To his own utter disbelief, Steve laughs. It’s genuine. 

“Like I said, we have heightened senses. So the things I hated, I _really_ hate now.” 

“And the things you love?”

Bucky makes a non-committal noise; it’s like a verbalized shrug. After a minute he says: “I don’t know if I have the capacity to love anymore. Love is such a— stale, unassuming word. I feel things like passion and rage. I’m obsessed with my sire, whether I like them or not. But do I love anything?” He scrunches up his nose; he looks like that old, sad dog again. Something in Steve untethers at the sight of it.

“That’s… sad.” 

Shaken from his own thoughts, Bucky looks at Steve, almost smiles. “See? The best thing you can do for yourself— the greatest punishment of all— is to just let us live.” 

“No,” Steve says, letting his head drop back on the plush booth upholstery. He watches the tiles on the ceiling. “It’s not about punishment.”

“Oh,” Bucky says. “You think you’re a hero.”

“I don’t think anything.”

“You do,” Bucky insists, leaning toward Steve again, close enough that Steve can’t help but look back at him. “You think that going around staking us is going to save mankind, and at the end of your life they’re going to give you a pretty gold medal, and throw you a party, and on your gravestone it’ll say STEVE ROGERS: AMERICAN HERO, and books will be written about you, and someday even a miniseries directed by the Clint Eastwood of the 3000s.”

“I don’t— wait, why Clint Eastwood?”

“Because you’re a dick,” Bucky says, and crosses his arms. 

“Vampires are,” Steve begins with a sigh, “historically and canonically evil. You are literally the monsters that hide in closets to scare children at night.”

“Inaccurate,” Bucky says. “I’ve been out of the closet for years.”

“How am I the bad guy here?”

“If we’re going by rate of people murdered, so far I’ve murdered _none_ , and you’ve murdered _countless of us_.”

“I think we’d have to define the term ‘people’ first,” Steve says. “Technically, you’re not even alive.”

“Thanks, that’s not a sore subject for me or anything.” 

“Christ.”

“Oh, he can’t help you now. In fact, I think he’d be very disappointed by your actions.” 

“You’re giving me indigestion,” Steve says. 

“Because I’m right?”

“Because you’re all over the place. Because— I’ve been all over the country. I’ve interrupted vampires in the middle of feeding on kids— tiny, broken bodies, some barely four years old— bleeding them dry, leaving the remnants strewn about for anyone to find. Cruelty just for cruelty’s sake. Young men and women stalked and hunted, terrorized to an inch of their life and then killed anyway. Skulls crushed, attached to unbled bodies— just for fun. Just because you _can_. I’ve seen possession and hypnotism. I know what you can do; I know what you’re capable of. This— right here— this is the only thing that’s new to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sitting here. With you. The club last week. Why haven’t you killed me?”

“Well,” Bucky says. “Even if I wanted to, even if that were my ultimate intention, I wouldn’t be able to do it here.” 

“Because it’s no man’s land.” 

“Right.”

“But the minute we step outside.”

“It wouldn’t take a minute,” Bucky says, shrugging. “I could snap your neck faster than you can snap your fingers. Or I’d drag you into an alley and have a nice meal first. These fries are good, but…” 

“Is that what you’re going to do?”

“No.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Steve says, wrinkling his brow.

“It’s… a peace offering. Your life. The Coven has decided to find a way that’s beneficial for both parties. Your staying here and doing the work that you do ensures that we’re the only ones left in the city. Less competition, more food, less unnecessary slaughter.”

“Why less slaughter?”

“You know by now that we don’t have to kill to feed. Many of us have constant, loyal blood bags who come and go as we please. It’s a system that keeps us safe, but it’s a system that not every vampire takes to. It makes the others bitter. Because we can’t kill one another— ”

“You kill one another’s humans.”

“It’s a tactic,” Bucky nods. “The people who are into this sort of thing— becoming ours— talk. Maybe they have a secret Discord server. The more dangerous a coven is, the less likely they come to us. It’s bad for business, and it’s bad for our reputation in this city.” 

“Business. You mean the club?”

Bucky nods again. 

“Do you actually need it for revenue?”

Bucky’s mouth draws into a thin line. “I can tell you a lot of things, but I can’t tell you everything. Besides, I don’t even know everything.”

“You seem like you know a lot, though. Is that normal for someone of your age?”

“No,” Bucky shakes his head, unable to keep a smile off of his face. “I’m special.”

“How.”

“You know how in, like, YA fantasy fiction, there’s always a Chosen One? I’m the Chosen One of vampires.”

“What?” Steve racks his brain for any information on this. Chosen One lore, even in fiction, is sparse and contradicting. Usually a child is arbitrarily assigned the role with no foundational work or history— this is what makes the Chosen One so universally appealing. It can be anyone. Regardless of gender assignment, class, race— it can be anyone. But for a child to be chosen on the off-chance that they’ll be bitten and turned… Steve can’t comprehend the statistics involved. 

“Holy shit,” Bucky says, throwing his head back to laugh. “You actually bought that.” 

“ _What?_ ” Steve asks again. Outside, it begins to thunder. 

“There’s… no such thing as the Chosen One of vampires, Rogers. I just happened to be sired by the type of person who walks around wearing an evil cape and loudly announces their master plan of treachery to anyone who’ll listen.”

“So you were an English teacher, right?”

Bucky grins. “What gave it away?” 

“You’re secretly dramatic,” Steve says. “I take it that Loki’s your sire.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow at that. 

“Sam explained coven hierarchies to me. He said the only way someone of your age could obtain your specific responsibilities and intel would be someone who was created by a leader. And Thor doesn’t strike me as the type to swivel an evil cape around.”

“They both have evil capes,” Bucky says, squinting at the plate of fries. Steve realizes, suddenly, that he’s trying not to laugh. “It’s disturbing.” 

“I can’t tell if you’re telling the truth.”

“That’s good,” Bucky nods. “I wish you’d had that realization when I first sat down.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“No. Maybe. Either way, it’s been insightful— getting to know you. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ll leave first, so you don’t have to worry about getting your neck snapped.”

“You could just wait for me and do it,” Steve points out.

“That’s true, but I won’t. I already explained. We want you around.” 

“You can’t expect me to believe that.” 

“I generally try to keep my expectations low these days,” Bucky says. “But it’d be nice if we could trust one another. I don’t think I have to tell you that Loki would slaughter you and everything you love if you ever tried to hurt me.” 

Steve gives him a tight-lipped smile. “What a way to gain my trust.” 

“Is there a way to gain your trust?”

“No,” Steve says. His coffee has gone cold. He desperately wants to be somewhere else, all of a sudden— somewhere far and light. The weather outside seems to drain him of his temperamental energy; it inflicts a chasm inside of him so gaping and so hollow that it lives and breathes like a companion. 

He watches the sky brighten with lightning, and when he looks back at Bucky, the vampire is gone. 

***

There’s an envelope waiting for him when he gets back to the apartment. Inside it, two words and an address.

Johann Schmidt. 1298 Madison Ave.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What,” Steve says, turning on Bucky, Schmidt briefly forgotten, “are you doing, following me around?”
> 
> “You just said. I’m following you around.” 

The Witch is waiting for him when he gets home— arranging cards cross-legged on his bed, dark hair falling across her eyes. 

“Hi honey,” she says without looking up.

“Hi, Wanda.” 

“Reading?”

“Uh, actually,” Bucky says, shrugging off his jacket, unlacing his boots, “I’m kind of tired.”

“Mm,” the Witch murmurs. She picks a card for him. _Okay, then_ , Bucky thinks. “It’s The Hermit, reversed.”

“What does that mean?” Bucky asks, joining her on the bed.

“It means you’re lonely.”

Bucky laughs. “I don’t think you needed the tarot to tell you that.” 

“This isn’t about me,” Wanda says. When she finally makes eye contact with him, it’s arresting; her light eyes like deep wells. “It’s about you.” She flips over another card and shows it to him. Suddenly she’s smiling.

“Okay,” Bucky says. “What’s that one mean?”

“It’s the Ace of Cups. Don’t you know?” 

“I don’t really believe in any of this stuff.”

“You’re a vampire,” she says. “You die in the sunlight and drink blood to survive. But the tarot is where you draw the line?”

“To be honest, I kind of just pretend none of this is really happening to me.”

“Don’t lie. I hate it when you lie.”

Sighing, Bucky lies back, his arms under his head. “What does it mean, then? The Ace of Cups.”

“It means your luck’s about to change for the better.” 

“Well, I don’t really see how it could change for the worse.”

She throws a pillow at his head. “Stop being such a grump. I already have to deal with Pietro.” 

Bucky gives her a lopsided smile in response. “That’s your personal choice.”

“He’s my brother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Good,” she says, looking satisfied. “You should be.” 

They don’t speak for moments or hours. Vampirism turns time obsolete, especially in an underground bunker like the Coven’s. Still, Bucky appreciates the Witch’s company more than he’ll admit, not because of some inexplicable incapability to admit vulnerabilities, but because he still grapples with the bewildering realities of his current life. Vampires and witches. Ancient souls trapped in the bodies of thirty year olds. 

He is so quiet that Wanda thinks he has fallen asleep when suddenly he says: “Steve Rogers.”

“What?”

“The vampire hunter. Loki’s having me follow him around, make sure he doesn’t die, et cetera. I can’t tell if it’s a real job or if they just want me out of their hair.”

Wanda brushes her hair back. There’s a smudge of eyeliner on her right cheek. “I’ve only met Loki once, but I got the impression they’d just bury you in a deep hole if they were sick of you.” 

Bucky laughs. “Like, toward the center of the earth, yeah.” 

“Would you die?”

“I’d starve. I’d become frail and corpse-like. But no— I wouldn’t die.”

Wanda nods, as if she’s made up her mind. “I’ll bet it’s a real job.” 

Minutes or years go by. “I think about this person a lot.” 

“Loki?”

“Steve Rogers.” 

“Oh,” Wanda says. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky says. “At first it was just… hunger. Before I figured out how to control it, all I could think of was how much my body hurt, the way you can feel your heart hurt after a breakup. Like I was breaking up with life. Like I could drain every person in the city and still never be satisfied. I’d lie in bed not sleeping, watching the ceiling, trying to ignore the emptiness I felt. In my stomach and in my soul.” He gives Wanda a sardonic look. “The Hermit.”

“Go on.”

“Then I realized, if I could just think of one thing— a real thing— cold sheets against my bare legs or an image of the city under a full moon— I could quiet the other feeling inside of me.”

“Steve Rogers is your real thing,” Wanda says. 

“Kind of. I mean, I don’t really know him. But I have this whole… life in my head for him— what he wakes up to and how he likes his eggs and whether he prefers coffee or tea. Coffee, I think. I put his day together minute by minute until I can fall asleep. That’s… crazy, right?”

“I don’t think I believe in crazy,” Wanda says, softly. 

“They used to say terrible things about you. Pietro told me.”

“That was in another life.”

“Before he became a vampire?”

“Before I became a witch,” Wanda says, smiling. “Enough seriousness, now.”

“Do you want to stay here tonight?”

“No.” She’s begun packing up her cards. “I can’t leave my brother, I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be sorry.” 

Quickly, as if being rushed, the Witch bends over Bucky and presses a soft kiss to his forehead. 

Once she’s gone, Bucky thinks again of the facts: dirty blond hair brushed back, broad shoulders outlined in a dark coat, hands like weapons, like art. Over easy. Coffee. Black.

  
  


***

  
  


It takes him three nights to decide to go to the apartment. He should be grateful, he knows. Having an address means he can scope the monster out, confirm the bloodlust in action, and come back during the day when it’s sleeping. Whether Thor has an ulterior motive for wanting _this_ particular vampire dead should be of no concern for Steve, who wants _every_ vampire dead. This is not a line of work where intentions matter more than results; and if it feels like cheating, vampire hunting makes no room for ego. 

Still. 

Still, if he stops by Clinton Church on his way uptown, the gesture is based in habit and not superstition. He and his God are no longer on speaking terms, but his God is on his side for this, as always. Fathering cursed creatures and watching them unmake one another. If Steve presses the holy water to his forehead and says a prayer, it’s a hateful one, and it garners no sympathy from the Man Upstairs. 

Why pray, then? Steve has no reservations about the work that he does, and he is not afraid for his life. There is never a plea for it, nor an attempt at bargaining. But there is _something_ , this time, an inquiry of reckoning perhaps— a conversation Steve wants to have. He has never worked alongside vampires before. He doesn’t understand what has swayed him to try now, or why he feels so uneasy even after acceptance. 

As expected, God has no answers for him, and Steve finds himself alone again, uptown, by the park. 

In fact, Steve is not alone; but he is too wrapped up in his own thoughts to realize it. 

The building is quintessentially Manhattan as seen in 90s rom-coms and corporate thrillers— the Manhattan of CEOs and pretty, white mothers who rarely see their toddlers. Steve assumes there’s a private elementary school nearby, a handful of boutiques, maybe a yoga studio. He assumes the dogs are all purebred and the children spend summers in the Hamptons, drinking lemonade prepared by nannies and maids. A neighborhood where doormen hold umbrellas over young couples and hail cabs for them. A neighborhood the grit never really touches, except for the vampire that lives there.

It’s chilly, even for late October. The doorman outside Schmidt’s building has both hands thrust into his pockets, breath hanging in the air. Steve watches him from afar, subtly craning to hear whether he greets tenants by last name as they enter and exit the building. He does. 

As Steve approaches, he pulls a cigarette out of his coat.

“Got a light?” 

He lets the doorman light it, leans back against the brick of the wall, and waits. 

By some stroke of vampire hunter’s luck, Steve hears the door open and a voice say “have a good evening, Mr. Schmidt” just as he’s drawing out the last puff from his cigarette. Slowly, he crushes it under his boot, and trails the man from ten paces behind. In the night, shadows overtake them both and Johann Schmidt’s face is a mystery: the back of his coat long and dark like Steve’s own. 

His focus quietly leads him down the avenue toward the park before another figure appears at his shoulder, falling into step with Steve like they’ve prearranged their movements. 

“How’s it going?” Bucky whispers.

Steve ignores him.

“Schmidt, right?”

“Lower your voice.”

“He’s miles away.”

“He’s barely half a mile away, and your kind has heightened hearing.”

“Mhm, but my kind can pitch our voices real low so that— hey, slow down.” 

“Can’t keep up?” Steve asks.

“You’ll make a scene.”

“What,” Steve says, turning on Bucky, Schmidt briefly forgotten, “are you doing, following me around?”

“You just said. I’m following you around.” 

Even in the dark, quiet glow of the Upper East Side, low hanging branches casting spidery shadows on his face, Bucky Barnes is beautiful. He looks like something made out of marble, carved by some old master, ivory and gilt. Insanely, he’s smiling.

“ _Why?_ ”

“I wanted to make sure you were doing your job. And that you didn’t die.”

“I’m touched.”

“You should be,” Bucky says, smoothly. “I don’t do this for just any of my sworn enemies who are actively trying to end my life and the life of everyone I currently know and love.”

Steve snorts. “Vampires and love.” 

“This again?”

They keep walking. Steve steps off the curb to cross the street, and Bucky’s hand is at the crook of his elbow, nudging him to the right instead. “He turned here.”

Steve complies wordlessly, like he’s neither grateful nor annoyed, and before he realizes this is what’s happening, Bucky is leading them up 85th, into the park.

“I don’t need a guard dog,” Steve hisses at the entrance. “Just tell me which way he went.”

Bucky rummages in his pocket for something, takes out a hard candy, unwraps it, and pops it in his mouth. “Why don’t you just come back when he’s asleep? You know where he lives.”

“I need to see him in action. I’m not going to stake a man just because Thor requested it.” 

“That’s weird,” Bucky says, munching loudly. “Most people will do anything just because Thor requested it.”

“He’s not really my type.”

“A man?”

“A vampire.”

“Oh,” Bucky says. He looks cloudy, somehow, eyes dim. “Right. He’s this way.” And because he is a monster who can’t follow direction, he takes Steve by the elbow again, and leads him quietly toward where Johann Schmidt is hunched over his prey, blood-soaked hands and teeth, feasting like a wild animal.

“Satisfied?” Bucky asks, quiet and taut. This is the most still Steve has seen him yet, a violin string vowing not to break. His face is unreadable— somehow plastered over a vastness, some emotion Steve cannot reach. Is it the blood? A stupid question, Steve thinks. It’s always the blood. 

“I’m never satisfied,” Steve replies, and walks forward, brandishing his Colt. 

It’s modest, unflashy work, killing vampires. Nothing like the films would have you believe. Most vampires do not realize they’re being hunted— because the art of vampire hunting is a quickly dying one— until it’s too late. It happens like this with Schmidt, too, who realizes only belatedly that there’s a hole in his forehead— a quiet trickle— and topples over. Bucky waits in the dark.

Steve kicks Schmidt’s body off of the woman (dead) and unloads two silver bullets into his chest, just in case. This makes more of an impact than the killing itself, the body thudding into the earth twice like a sack of frozen meat. He flips his phone open, photographs the evidence for Thor, and walks back to Bucky.

“Let’s go.”

“Is that a flip phone? In the 21st century? You have a flip phone?”

“Shut up.”

“You know all my friends know how to use apps, right? And they’re like… well into their hundreds.”

“Is there a reason you’re still here?” Steve asks.

“Uh huh.”

“And what’s that.”

“We’ve got company,” Bucky says, as twelve bodies emerge from the dark, small moons where their eyes should sit, sharp knives where their teeth should be. 

“Fuck,” Steve grits out, as he finds himself back to back with Bucky, braced for combat. “You any good?” 

The vampires circle them.

“Guess we’ll find out,” Bucky says, flashing a grin over his shoulder.

The woman standing directly across from Steve is petite and blonde; she could still be in high school. Her pretty lips roll back to bear long, white fangs and the second Steve shoots her through the heart, all hell breaks loose. Bucky reaches behind him and slips Steve’s dagger out of its holster, careful not to touch the silver of the blade. 

“Didn’t think you noticed that one,” Steve shouts, firing again. 

“Aw, honey,” Bucky says. “I notice everything.” 

They fight like they’ve been trained together, rapid and in tandem, falling into the sort of synchronization even lifelong partners dream about. Bucky pulls a vampire off of Steve and cracks his skull open before thrusting the dagger into his heart. Steve shoots two on either side of Bucky, before they can get him from behind. 

There are moments when Steve loses Bucky, so used to working alone, to _being_ alone, that the shock of his steady presence decapitating a smaller man in Steve’s peripheral becomes a comfort and a reassurance. Thoughts come unbidden in the middle of combat, unhindered by the barriers of logic and self-preservation. Thoughts Steve pushes back, intent on the slaughter before him, a dismembered arm in his hand, moving through the blood and bone in slow motion. 

When there’s only one of them left, Bucky drags the vampire to the ground in a chokehold, the silver of the blade pressed against his chest. The creature recoils and squirms; Steve aims the pistol at his heart.

“Where did you come from?”

The vampire chokes and spits.

“What was your connection to Johann Schmidt? Why were you following us?”

He struggles in Bucky’s arms, and Bucky presses the blade harder. 

“Fuck you,” the vampire hisses. 

“Why don’t you just make this easier on yourself?” Steve asks. “You know you’re going to die. Why not tell me what I want to know, and I’ll make it quick?”

“Eat my ass,” the vampire says. 

“Dude,” Bucky says. “Really? That’s what you’re going with? Eat my ass?”

“Hela’s going to destroy you,” the vampire says, looking straight into Bucky’s eyes. “She’s going to have you for dinner. Then you’ll wish you took me up on that offer.”

“To... eat your ass,” Bucky says, slowly. 

And before any of them can say another word, the vampire breaks out of Bucky’s grip, lunges at Steve, and takes a single bullet in the heart. A choked off sound escapes his throat, something between croaking and snarling, and he drops to the ground. Bucky watches Steve look down at his body, a mixture of disgust and irritation on his tired, sleepless face. 

“Let’s go,” Steve says. 

The park looks like a massacre zone. Blood is smeared on the concrete and grass, along with bits of muscle and bone. Body parts are strewn about, pale and pulsing under the street lights. Steve shakes the dust off of his coat, and walks away. And Bucky follows.

“This’ll probably be on the news tomorrow,” Bucky says. “If you just leave it like that.”

“Cleaning up isn’t part of the job,” Steve shrugs. “Besides— your lot will deal with it before the press. Isn’t that how you operate? Lurk in shadows and pretend you don’t exist?”

“You’re very dramatic.”

“And you don’t take anything seriously.”

“That’s not true,” Bucky says. “I take multiple things very seriously. I just don’t know what you expect me to do about the condition of my existence, since— you know— I literally can’t un-vampire myself back into a human being.”

“Would you, if you could?”

“In a heartbeat,” Bucky says, quietly. 

They walk in silence for a long time. It’s a little past one in the morning when Bucky begins to fall behind. 

“What are— are you limping?”

“I’m fine,” Bucky says. 

“Show me.”

“You know we heal ourselves, right? It’s fine.”

“Show me.”

Sighing, Bucky unbuttons his coat and lifts his sweater up. There’s a deep gash, coated in blood, set in the center of an ugly, blooming bruise. “It’s fine,” he repeats.

“My apartment is closer than the club,” Steve says, and his voice is steely. 

“What, looking to finish me off?” 

“I could do that here, if I wanted.”

“So why don’t you?” Bucky asks, buttoning back up. 

“Come on,” Steve says, and that’s the end of that discussion.

  
  


***

  
  


Sam opens the door for them before Steve can pull his keys out. 

“Another stray?”

There’s a sardonic look, and somebody rolls their eyes, and then Bucky is being shown inside, _invited_ , sat down on the couch. He takes the opportunity to look around the apartment with its minimal art and exposed brick. When he cranes his head he can see basil and rosemary potted in the kitchen window. The light is warm, golden honey. He lets himself settle into the soft brown leather of the couch. 

“Are you going to kill me together?” Bucky asks the Black man peering inquisitively at him, arms crossed. “You know how bad that’d be for you.” 

“I’m already an outcast,” Sam replies. “If the man says to kill you, I’m going to have to kill you. No hard feelings, though.” He puts his hands up, to show that he means it.

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky nods, sagely. “No hard feelings at all.”

He is, he realizes, mildly surprised at the existence of a vampire living under the same roof as the vampire hunter— and also aware of how mild his surprise is. Steve Rogers is a lot of interesting, contradictory things wrapped up in one haggard, grumpy, incredibly broad-shouldered man. Bucky watches Sam move down the hall to the bathroom where Steve is, and he listens in as they talk in hushed voices. 

“Okay, but really,” Sam is saying. “Did you bring him here to kill him? Because I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“No, Sam— ”

“Because your work is one thing, but I don’t even know what the guy did to you, besides follow you around a little bit. And I’m not going to say stalking in the real world is okay, but stalking in the vampire world is a little par for the course. I mean, we’re _creepy_ beings, Steve. We’re not romantic heroes, no matter what that Mormon woman wants you to believe.”

“Sam, you have got to let _Twilight_ go.”

“It’s just offensive.” 

“Right, yeah. I get it. I— ”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Bucky interrupts, calling from the living room. He’s found a quilt; he’s burrowed underneath it. Two minutes later Steve comes out, armed with medical supplies. “I don’t need any of that,” Bucky says, frowning. 

“Are you bleeding on my couch?”

“The bleeding is almost stopped,” Bucky says. He pulls his sweater up again. “See?”

“Something in there looks broken,” Sam says, casually, before walking into his own room and shutting the door.

“It is!” Bucky says. He looks up at Steve, both good-humored and clearly exhausted, and says again, more quietly: “Two ribs, I think.”

“How?”

“Well, Steve. I don’t know if you noticed this— but we were attacked and outnumbered.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

“The bulky redheaded woman stuck a knife in me. And the guy you tried— and failed— to question elbowed me as he was getting up. _Hard_.” 

“You didn’t say anything.”

“Toxic vampirism,” Bucky nods. “We can’t admit defeat. Look— I can’t stay here all night. They’re going to be looking for me.”

“Mhm,” Steve says, squeezing Neosporin all over the wound.

“I physically can’t get an infection.”

“Right,” Steve says, blotting at it, taping soft gauze over it. He drops three ibuprofen into Bucky’s palm. “For the pain.”

“I can think of something better,” Bucky says, grabbing Steve’s wrist. “We never finished our conversation. At the bar, the night we met.”

Steve looks at Bucky’s hand on his wrist, and he looks at Bucky.

“When you pretended to be interested in me,” Bucky says. “Remember?”

“I remember,” Steve says, and pulls away. 

“I don’t need painkillers,” Bucky says, after a moment. His eyes don’t leave Steve’s face. “I need blood or time.”

“You can have one of those things,” Steve says. 

He takes a seat in the sofa chair across from Bucky— the one he sits in when he’s watching Sam, worrying over him, counting his breaths like he’ll stop taking them, like the curse will end before Steve is ready, like he could still die— and watches him, too. 2:30am. 

It begins, as always, to rain.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is that a concept you’re unfamiliar with?”
> 
> “Which part?”
> 
> “Liking someone. Compromising. Trying,” Bucky ticks off. “Not being judgmental that they’re a vampire because you recognize that they can’t help it and if they had a say their life probably would have turned out really differently— like, lessons in Nabakov and office hours differently— but then they probably never would have met you in the first place.”
> 
> Steve looks at him for a very long moment. “You like Nabakov?”

The knock on the door jolts him awake. 3:37am. Bucky is looking at him, sidelong, just one eye open. 

“You shouldn’t fall asleep near hungry vampires,” he says.

“Shut up.”

Steve opens the door to a less dramatic than usual— but still very dramatic— Loki in high-waisted trousers, a silk shirt, and a dark, green velvet blazer. He grits his teeth, annoyed that the Coven has infiltrated his life— tracking his scent all over the city. To his own apartment.

“What are you doing here?”

“You have something that’s mine,” the Queen responds, coolly, peering into the room. Steve notices, with some satisfaction, that they make no attempt to enter. 

“He’s fine.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Actually,” Steve says, bracing a forearm on the doorframe, “you won’t.”

Narrowing their eyes, Loki tilts his head toward a shelf, and all of Steve’s books come toppling out of it. 

“Nice trick.”

Something begins to rattle in the kitchen. In the second it takes Steve to turn toward the noise, the knives have come out— all of them, surrounding him. 

“Do you think I have to come inside to hurt you?” Loki asks. 

“I won’t have you in my house,” Steve says. To his surprise, Loki lets the knives drop where they are, one of them missing Steve’s foot by half an inch.

“There are two vampires in there already. You are being difficult for what reason.”

“I’m not being difficult; this is _my apartment_.”

“I let you into my home,” Loki says, pouting. “I let your Nordstrom Rack wardrobe touch my 18th century Venetian upholstery.”

Steve opens his mouth again, this time to say _fuck off_ , but the look on Loki’s face gives him pause. Somewhere, behind the irritation, the arrogance, and the discount-clothing-shaped indignation, is a modicum of concern. It’s not just a modicum, Steve realizes. It’s an endless sea, torrentuous and starving, black gasping emptiness. It’s desperation. 

Steve feels no sympathy for the vampire Queen standing before him. But he _is_ interested to see where this goes.

“Come in,” he says.

Loki pushes past him and into the living room. They sit beside Bucky’s legs and begin to prod him, eyes narrowed, profile like a knife. 

“I’m fine,” Bucky insists, then looks pleadingly at Steve. “I’m _fine_.” 

“You’re barely a year old,” Loki says, slicing their wrist open with their teeth. “This will take days without my help.” They shove their arm against Bucky’s mouth.

“I’m over a year old,” Bucky mumbles, mouth full of blood. Steve watches, not without some fascination, the bruise on Bucky’s abdomen fading away. 

Loki rolls their eyes and acknowledges Steve. “I take it Schmidt’s dead.” 

“Is that what you do? Thor gives out orders and you check to make sure they’re done?” 

“I can’t stand it when people answer questions with more questions,” Loki says. 

“Schmidt’s dead,” Bucky says. He sits up, wiping his mouth, and watches Loki’s wrist close up on its own. “Thanks.” 

“Did you know we’d be attacked?”

“No.”

“Really,” Steve states, raising an eyebrow. 

“If I knew, I’d have let you handle it alone,” Loki says, standing. They pull Bucky up with them, somehow both territorial and protective. Like a terrible mother. Steve watches them in silence. “You may be important to Thor, but you aren’t important enough to waste one of mine on.” 

“Great,” Steve says. “Now get the fuck out.”

“What terrible manners you have, Hunter. Don’t you realize I came here to save your life?” 

“You could try being a little nicer,” Bucky whispers to Loki, loud enough for Steve to hear. “He doesn’t do well with adversity.”

Steve shoots him a look that still says _fuck off_ but has maybe a little less bite to it. 

“I don’t see where the threat is,” Steve says.

“Of course not.” Loki begins picking the books off the floor— not because they’re sorry for making a mess, Steve quickly realizes, but to judge Steve’s taste in literature. “ _The Second World War_ by Antony Beevor,” they announce, making a face. “ _Dombey and Son_. _The Brothers Karamazov_. A book on Hiroshima. Are you eighty?”

“I ask him that all the time,” Sam says, lingering in his own doorway. He looks at Loki with no caution and all curiosity. “We haven’t met.” 

“Why would we have?” Loki murmurs, flipping through _Jude the Obscure_. “Riley is your sire, isn’t he?”

“You know him?”

“Mm. We attempted to recruit him back in the 70’s. I assume he’s the reason you and the vampire hunter know so much about us.”

“No comment,” Sam says.

“When you don’t comment it’s as incriminating as if you had commented,” Loki says, and shuts the book. “You realize that, right? Anyway— something you don’t know, I’m assuming, is the extent of Fenris’s power.” 

“What’s Fenris?” Steve interjects. 

“Another coven,” Loki says. “They work inside of— ” and here, they pinch the bridge of their nose, as though the thought of what comes next is too painful and disappointing to bear— “New Jersey, led by an ancient old bitch named Hela. Remember that little conversation you and Thor had about competition?”

Steve and Bucky exchange a look, much to Steve’s personal devastation.

“Johann Schmidt,” Loki continues, “belonged to Fenris. He wasn’t a particularly valuable member of the family, and he certainly wasn’t skilled enough for Hela to shed a tear over, but you took something of hers nevertheless, and she won’t be too pleased about it.”

Sam opens his mouth to speak, but Loki ignores him.

“Actually,” they say, something bright and pleased in their eyes, “you took more than just one something, didn’t you? How many vampires ambushed you in the park?”

“You did know,” Steve says, slowly. He can feel the blood pounding in his ears; the realization setting in. Thor’s pick for Steve not just one vampire, but multiple, backing him into a corner. “You set me up.” 

“It didn’t exactly go as I had hoped, though, did it?”

“I’m lost,” Bucky says. “And we’ve only got a couple of hours until sun up. And you— ” here, he looks at Steve, quietly, unwilling to give himself away— “you must be tired.” 

“The deal was one name,” Steve says, ignoring Bucky. “ _One_ name.”

“And you went and started a war,” Loki tsks. “ _So_ careless. Very dangerous.” 

“I should kill you right here,” Steve says, unable to keep the heat out of his voice, exhaustion wiped away by rage-fueled adrenaline. 

“Your confidence borders on arrogance.” 

“And yours?”

“Mine is earned,” they say, taking Bucky’s hand. “We have to go. Come by the club tomorrow night if you want to stay alive.” 

As they brush past Steve, Bucky looking sorrier than expected, Loki stops at Steve’s shoulder to look into his eyes, gaze blazing. “You shouldn’t have shot him,” they say. “And you _really_ should have taken the original deal.”

  
  


***

  
  


“You’ve been very serious lately,” Loki says, pulling the comb down Thor’s hair. 

“We’re on the brink of war,” comes the reply. “You’d be cross with me if I wasn’t taking it seriously.”

“Yes, but you could afford to laugh once in a while.”

“Did you just tell me to smile more?” Thor asks, turning to them. 

Loki grins, then laughs, flicking water up into his face. Thor smears bubbles on their nose and kisses them messily. Here, in the sanctity of their home, they ward the rain out together like twin exorcists. Vampire lorists who claim the creatures are vile, distant things have never met the King and Queen of Ragnarok, who have held one another through plagues and inquisitions, wars and depressions. Through and despite empires, new gods crumbling around them like stone temples, like Pompeii, like democracy. It’s what the history books will never get right. The King and Queen were here before the 11th century conquest of England, and they will be here well after the third, fourth, fifth world wars. 

“It was smart to trick the vampire hunter into opening the door, but we’ll have to be careful with him now,” Loki says after Thor has settled back in their arms. “He’ll never trust us.” 

“He was never going to trust us to begin with. You just called me smart— say that again.” 

“No.”

“One more time.” 

“I physically cannot,” Loki says. “Anyway, we have no idea how things will turn out. I wasn’t expecting him to catch Schmidt in the act and kill him right then and there.”

“You mean you weren’t expecting to involve Bucky Barnes.”

“No,” Loki says, slowly. “I thought the hunter would go back during the day. Only an idiot like Schmidt would live in the open like that; it was almost too perfect.” 

“Schmidt lived in the open because Hela convinced him he was untouchable, and she needed a contact in the city who wasn’t a complete moron.”

“Schmidt _was_ a complete moron.” Loki pauses, then, happily: “And now he is dead.”

“And now the work begins.”

“If she attacks,” Loki says. “If she does not, you’ve played your hand, and we’ll have to start all over.” 

“Why wouldn’t she attack?”

“Because she knows the law just as well as you do, Thor. A vampire who strikes out against another vampire deserves the retaliation they receive. If she takes the moment to stop and think, she’ll see right through what you’re doing.”

“She has no idea the vampire hunter was my doing,” Thor says. 

“Then how do you expect her to attack us? Honestly, Thor. I’m beginning to think you haven’t thought this through. There are too many holes in your plan.” Loki sits up straighter, tossing the comb aside. “You should have let me handle this.”

“Your plans never work, my love.” 

“That’s because you never give me a chance. I could have come up with something better— it wouldn’t have been like the last time.”

“Or the time before that?” Thor asks, softly.

He can feel Loki bristling against him, manic despite their best efforts to seem still, collected. Thor takes their hands in his, and wraps their arms around him as the bath water starts to cool. Loki, who is brilliant in every sense of the word, detail-oriented and cautious, has a habit of choking last minute. They become self-conscious and unsettled, wanting too much too quickly, as if their place in the world will disappear if they don’t act immediately. Thor can’t decide if it’s some mild trauma from their upbringing, before they had met one another, or if it’s simply that Loki is a Gemini.

Thor holds them tighter, loving them as much now as he did at the beginning. Loving them more, somehow.

“We’ll figure it out together,” he says. 

“You say that,” Loki sniffs, “but I know you will come up with something behind my back.”

“When have I ever done that?”

“That’s exactly my point. You haven’t yet, which means it is inevitable that you will soon.”

“Oh,” Thor says. “Is this the conversation we’re having now?”

“You haven’t even denied it.” 

Thor stands, sloshing water onto the tile floor, turning to face Loki. 

“I like this view,” they say. 

“Come on,” Thor says, leaning over to pull them up. “You get strange like this when you haven’t been fucked.” 

“But I’ve just gotten clean,” Loki smiles, the curve of their mouth like a knife. “The hunter will be here soon.” 

“You’re never clean,” Thor says, “and the hunter can wait.” 

  
Bucky wakes to the sound of them hallways away and still not far enough. Sighing, he plunges himself into a shower— body healed from Loki’s blood— and tries not to think of the vampire hunter. He dries himself off and slicks his hair back and tries not to think of the vampire hunter. He dresses, carefully, all black— some Vetements/Balmain combination Loki gifted him months ago— and tries not to think of the vampire hunter. 

“Steve Rogers,” he says quietly, out loud, in front of the mirror, and feels the chasm in his stomach pulsing, yawning bigger. Bucky thinks of the man’s tired eyes and five o’clock shadow, the haggard-hungry look on his face after the massacre at the park. Bringing Bucky to his apartment, to his home. A man who thinks he’s one thing, but is really something else. A man who speaks in black and white, but acts in grey. 

But a man still, Bucky reminds himself. A man with the sun still inside of him— a life gleaming in the light of the day. What right, then, does Bucky Barnes have to think of this man who could never be anything else? 

Bucky sits on the edge of his bed for a long time, feeling small.

At a quarter past nine, he heads upstairs, into the nightclub. It’s nearly empty the way it always is at this hour, but sitting at the bar, hunched over a glass of bourbon, is Steve Rogers. He looks like a man on the verge of either violence or compromise. It’s funny how men seem to equate the two.

Bucky forces himself to adopt a carefree demeanor and takes the seat beside him. 

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Steve says, without looking at him. 

“You’re moodier than usual,” Bucky points out. “How did you even manage that?”

“It’s a talent.”

“What happened? Is it Sam?”

Steve glances at him now, looking but not looking, his expression so stormy Bucky regrets asking. He isn’t sure where he went wrong, exactly, so early into the night. He decides to switch gears.

“Hey,” Bucky says, touching Steve’s arm. “I wanted to thank you for the other night. I know it must have been difficult for you to do what you did, considering you’ve decided we’re mortal enemies who can’t live while the other survives, or whatever, but— ”

“Don’t mention it,” Steve interrupts, pulling his arm away. 

“What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“You weren’t like this before,” Bucky says, frowning. “Even at the diner, when I thought you hated me. Why the cold shoulder now?”

Steve takes his shot, then signals for another. Elektra and Frank are huddled together behind the bar, laughing at some private joke— the cross around Elektra’s neck gleaming in the dark club light.

“This is how it should have been from the beginning.”

“I don’t understand,” Bucky says, deflating. 

Steve meets his eyes this time, and the look on his face is glassy and steel. He looks like a man haunted, pulled apart by expectation and reality. He looks like he has not slept in days or weeks or years. 

“I’m not out to get you,” Bucky tries. 

“No? Your coven is. And like an idiot, I fell for it. Because I was distracted. Because you— ”

“You just said I didn’t do anything.”

“Explain that to me,” Steve changes the subject, nodding at Elektra. “A Catholic vampire.”

“Oh. No. Her boyfriend’s a priest.” 

“You’re kidding.” 

“I’m very serious, actually.” 

“How does that work?” Steve asks, looking more curious than angry for the first time all night. 

“I don’t know, Steve,” Bucky says. “I guess when two people like each other enough, they try to make it work.” 

“Mm.”

“Is that a concept you’re unfamiliar with?”

“Which part?”

“Liking someone. Compromising. Trying,” Bucky ticks off. “Not being judgmental that they’re a vampire because you recognize that they can’t help it and if they had a say their life probably would have turned out really differently— like, lessons in Nabakov and office hours differently— but then they probably never would have met you in the first place.”

Steve looks at him for a very long moment. “You like Nabakov?”

“I like— nevermind, Steve.”

“Hello boys,” Val says, slamming a fist down on the bar between them. “Ready to rumble?”

“Why can’t you make a normal, subtle entrance?” Bucky mumbles.

“Why are you always complaining?” Val shoots back. 

“You’re noisy.”

“And you’re coming with me. Get up,” Val says, then nods at Steve. “You, too, hunter. Keep your hands where I can see them.” 

They’re led to the same private room as before except that tonight there are far more vampires than just Thor and Loki sitting in plain view. The table is clear of its tchotchkes and baubles, replaced by only what looks to be a blueprint, and long flickering candles in candlesticks. A woman sits at Thor’s right hand; her pale face looks severe in the firelight. Only Thor looks up at them as they sit across from him, Loki, and the woman. He smiles.

“I’m glad to see you made it.”

“You didn’t give me much of a choice,” Steve says. 

“That’s true. I prefer not to leave things to chance.” 

“A skill he learned from me,” Loki says, arching an eyebrow. “It’s an incredibly new development and we’re all still trying to get used to it.” 

The woman rolls her eyes, looking straight at Val, and finally acknowledging Steve. “I’m Sif. It’s nice of you to join us, no matter how much you don’t want to be here— so I’ll try to keep this brief. The bottom line is that we’re on the brink of war, and we need you.”

“I thought you already got what you needed from me,” Steve says, gritting his teeth.

“Not exactly. It was a good start, though.”

Thor smiles at that, giving Steve a thumbs up. Steve, briefly, wonders if he has walked into a dream, some kind of donut-and-energy-drink-fueled nightmare rotting his brain from the inside out. 

“Look,” Sif continues, pointing to two different spots on the map. “It’s important we cover all our bases while Thor and I distract Hela. Val will stay here and make sure business runs smoothly. The hunter— Steve— will go in through the back door, here. Take Barnes and Castle with you, equip them with whatever you deem necessary. Natchios, Danvers, and Maximoff can use the grate on the other side. You’ll come, of course,” she nods at Steve, “because they will have already assumed you’re working with us.”

“Because of Schmidt,” Steve says, incredulous, shaking his head. “Because you sent me after someone with a personal connection to this coven you want destroyed. And now— what— they’re out to get me?”

“Right,” Sif says. “And no matter how good you are, vampire hunter, you will never be good enough to take on an entire coven alone. Your choice is simple. Work with us and live, or go home and die.”

“I think I’d rather take the hunter with me,” Thor interrupts. “He’s proven himself formidable under pressure.”

“That’s fine,” Sif says, at the same time Bucky blurts out: “No way.”

They all stop to look at him, mildly horrified, the way they would react to a peasant wiping his nose on a noble’s boots. Only Loki grins, leaning in, showing their teeth. 

“I just think,” Bucky continues, quickly, “surely Hela has a security system in place specifically built to detect vampire hunters. If you take him up front, she could kill him immediately.”

Thor makes a face that seems to say _And?_

“And then— what if she’s satisfied with that? What if she gets all her rage out on him, and doesn’t attack you? You’d have to find another vampire hunter entirely, and that one might be harder to trick.” 

“That’s fair,” Thor says, thoughtfully. “I would hate to have to find a smarter vampire hunter.” 

“I’m right here,” Steve says. “You see that, right?”

“Don’t take it personally,” Thor says. “I find all of you humans ridiculous. However, Barnes may be right. You’ll go from the back.” 

“Any security in the back?” Val asks, peering over Steve’s shoulder.

“Familiars,” Sif says.

“Familiars are a grey area,” Thor says. “Those shouldn’t be a problem.”

“What do you mean— a grey area?” Steve asks.

“There’s nothing in our code that says human familiars are off-limits,” Thor explains. 

“Nothing that says they aren’t, either,” Val says. 

“That’s right,” Thor says. “But I think we can take our chances here. I imagine any humans voluntarily in the service of a vampire like Hela won’t be mourned by our kind.” 

“I don’t understand your code,” Steve says. 

“It isn’t for you to understand.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Cool. Great. What’s the plan, exactly?”

“I was getting to that,” Sif mumbles. “The disorganization at Ragnarok is unbelievable.” 

Loki yawns— exaggerated— bored. “Perhaps you’re the problem, Sif. It seems to me as though you’re the only one here wasting our time.” 

“One day,” Sif says, smiling, “I will murder you in your sleep.”

“You would have to be skilled at something for that,” Loki says.

“I will _fucking_ kill you,” Sif snarls, reaching around Thor towards them; Loki standing immediately, brandishing a dagger from out of thin air. 

“Will you do this somewhere else?” Thor asks, calmly, pulling Sif over his lap and dropping her onto Loki’s in one, fluid motion. Unfazed, he smiles at Steve. “I’m sorry about this. They’re siblings— it really can’t be helped. Where were we?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. He looks, to Bucky, who looks as though his complete understanding of reality has been stomped out of him. Defeated, in a way. Resigned. And maybe a little uncertain, suddenly, that vampires are worth destroying at all, if they’re this absurd and dysfunctional.

“You’re coming with me,” Bucky says. “Thor will go in with Loki and Sif under the guise of a peace offering, and provoke her into attacking somehow. If she strikes first, physically, we can strike back, and get rid of Fenris for good. That’s what the two of you want, isn’t it?”

Thor watches Bucky as he speaks, seeing him for the first time. He smiles.

“This should be easy enough,” Loki says, lifting their head from where they have Sif pinned to the ground.

“It will be,” Thor says. “Except that you will go with the others, and Sif will come with me.”

“ _Excuse me_?” Loki untangles themselves from Sif. 

“You heard what I said.”

“No. I won’t be pushed aside— ”

“Yes,” Thor says. “If something happens to me, you will take my place, and find a new Queen.”

Loki looks as if they’ve been struck. 

Sif stands, slowly, taking Loki’s hand in hers. “You’ll be fine, Thor,” she says. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Still,” Thor nods. “Loki will go with Barnes and the vampire hunter. You will bring the weapons you bought off the Romanoff woman,” he says, looking Steve in the eye. “All of them. And if you are faithful to us, at the end of the night, we will let you go unharmed.” 

“This wasn’t the deal,” Steve says. 

“We are way past that.” 

Bucky watches the hatred in Steve’s eyes grow and grow; it’s a forest fire spreading. 

“But,” Thor continues. “I promised you a name. Hela’s father, Odin. He’s the one who killed your mother. He’ll be at Fenris, too.”

“What an interesting turn of events,” Loki says, softly. 

“You didn’t know?” Bucky asks them— but Loki does not answer. 

“When do we do this?” Steve asks. His voice is terrible. 

“Tomorrow night,” Thor says.

“How do we get there?”

And to Bucky’s horror, Thor reaches into the pocket of his very long, very red robe, and pulls out a handful of metro cards.

“We take the PATH,” he says. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t be stupid,” Bucky says, crouching, holding his open wrist to Steve’s mouth. “This is a terrible place to die.”
> 
> “During a vampire war?” Steve mumbles like a drunk, tasting copper, and salt, and light.
> 
> “In _New Jersey_.” 

Onlookers see this: nine Vitamin-D deficient LARPers on their way to an all-night Renaissance Fair and one Black man looking moderately embarrassed to be chaperoning, but also not above quietly mocking them. Sam Wilson has no business getting himself mixed up in this mess— no interest in coven rivalries or getting murdered in the crossfires— but Steve, who came back to the city, who invited him into his home, who brought him blood from the hospital night after night— Steve deserves someone in his corner. And it’s always going to be Sam. 

“We could have taken an Uber,” Loki says, arms crossed, back pressed against the doors of the car.

“We would not have fit,” Thor says.

“We could have taken multiple Ubers,” Loki says. “You have an unhealthy fascination with this century’s human torture chambers.”

“I like to see how the insignificant live,” Thor shrugs.

“Are you people for real?” Sam asks. “Thousands of people go to work every day on the PATH.”

The King and Queen burst into laughter. 

“If I had to work, I would simply just die,” Loki says. 

“Honestly,” Thor says. “Why would I be poor when I could be rich instead?” 

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Loki snickers. 

“I get it now,” Sam says, nodding, turning to Steve. “I get why you want all of us dead.”

“Not all of you,” Steve says, quietly, still serious, and though Sam knows he means him, he also can’t help but notice the way Steve’s eyes slant toward Bucky, just for a moment. “I’m glad you’re here, Sam.”

Sam surveys the car they’re on: Elektra and Frank huddled together, undoubtedly whispering about murder; Carol with a duffle bag full of explosives slung over her shoulder; Pietro playing Breath of the Wild on his Switch, muttering curses under his breath every time he dies. Thor and Loki and Sif looking in turns regal and deadly, bodies taut and braced under expressions of calm. Bucky sitting by himself, chewing on his lower lip. They had made their introductions earlier, one by one; and if they were surprised to meet a vampire who willingly chose to live with a hunter, they didn’t say anything about it. 

Now, Sam shrugs.

“I can with full honesty say that I’m not,” he says, “but I wasn’t going to let you do this alone.”

“That’s nice of you,” Steve laughs. “Thanks for that.” 

“Any time, man. But also hopefully never again.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, quietly, glancing at Thor and Loki over his shoulder. “I’ll make sure of that.” 

They get off in Hoboken like a bizarre goth procession and split up under the cover of night. Fenris operates out of an ugly old warehouse, once used for packaging and shipping, then as a venue for Jersey hardcore bands and party monster rejects from the city. Now— almost unbelievably— it’s something much worse. 

Loki leads their group the long way, wordless, focused or angry or both. Steve finds Bucky at one shoulder and Sam at the other, and a sense of security pulls over him like a blanket. He tells himself it’s unfounded. He knows that it isn’t.

Frank Castle brings up the rear, his long trench covering an M16 automatic. Steve doesn’t need to see it to know he’s clad in his forever skull shirt, too. The vampires seem to have their tokens— little talismans to keep them safe from their enemies. Elektra’s cross and Frank’s skull. A satchel of sage and clove made by a sister-witch. Whatever Bucky’s is, Steve hasn’t found it yet. Isn’t sure if he wants to. Doesn’t know how he’d react, now, to the knowledge of someone else— of what little Steve knows of Bucky’s world and life expanding— letting the light in— exposing other people who had previously not existed to Steve. Who exist to Bucky, apart from Steve. 

“You look really serious,” Bucky says, shoving Steve out of his thoughts.

“Well, I might die.”

“We’re not going to let you die, Steve.”

“Right,” Steve grunts. “Maybe not you, but I’m well aware there’s no reason for Thor and Loki to keep me around after tonight.”

“You’re wrong,” Bucky says. He watches Loki ahead of them and pitches his voice low. “You _want_ to see the bad in them, so you make up threats where there aren’t any. They may not be, like, the most pleasant people you’ll ever meet— but their word is good.”

“I think it’s fine that you believe that.”

“Yeah, but I need you to believe it, too.”

“Why?” Steve asks, as they round the corner, the warehouse in full view now. 

“Because I don’t want you to worry,” Bucky says. 

“I don’t understand why it matters so much to you.”

“Just does.” 

“Explain to me why.”

“ _Because_ ,” Bucky says, and it’s loud enough that Loki turns to them, startled. They narrow their eyes. 

“Be quiet. We’re nearly there.” 

“I’ll go first,” Castle says. 

The five of them stand shoulder to shoulder, away from the street lights. There’s a wash of grey in the night sky, the color of charcoal and high school varsity track pants, a haze of foreboding in the air. Steve can’t tell whether it’s that they’re on the brink of something dangerous or New Jersey’s natural aroma: sweat, tension, pollution. He watches as Castle stalks off, cautious at first then quick, disappearing behind trash-tinged brush and reappearing again against the stark walls of the building. 

It only takes a minute or two for Loki’s phone to buzz. 

“Let’s go,” they say. 

“What about the others?” Bucky asks.

“Worry about us,” Loki says, and crosses the street. 

On the other side of the warehouse, Elektra, Carol, and Pietro crouch by the grate, pulling it gently off of its hinges. 

At the front, four guards watch with quiet trepidation as the King of Ragnarok approaches the front door with a single soldier at his side. He smiles at them. 

He says, “I’ve come to see my sister.”

  
  


***

  
  


The aftermath is black and white and bloodsoaked, a ringing in Steve’s ears assaulting him, making it impossible to see. There was an explosion, he remembers. Shouting. Someone has bandaged his arm with a makeshift tourniquet— he later realizes it’s the red of Thor’s shirt, mixed with the burnt, bitter red of his own blood. Moments come to him in flashes, in comic book panels, color alternating between complete blackout. Steve has never been to war; but this is war. 

Heat crackles in his knuckles, across his cheeks, and he realizes that something is on fire. He realizes that it is a body. That there is a body on fire, and he does not know who it belongs to. 

“Odin,” he says, picking himself off of the ground. From across the room he can see a throne, flames lapping at its legs. A woman with a black crown on her head is lunging at Thor. 

On instinct, Steve raises his bad hand, and fires. He has just enough energy to watch the bullet miss Thor by a centimeter and lodge itself in the woman’s abdomen. It seems to do nothing. _This must be Hela_ , he thinks, as he slumps back down onto the floor, aching, broken. _I hope it’s Hela_. 

Strong arms grab hold of him and drag him out of the way. When he regains his vision, it’s Loki looking down at him, an unreadable expression on their face. 

“You’re hurt,” they say.

“I’ll be fine,” Steve musters.

“I don’t think you understand,” Loki says. “You are bleeding in a room full of vampires. Thor was able to get to you before the others, but as always he’s done a piss-poor job of halting the blood. And now you smell of him _and_ dinner.” 

“What happened? Shouldn’t you be helping him, instead of here with me? Don’t— ”

Loki stops, teeth bared at their own wrist. 

“I don’t want your blood,” Steve manages. It hurts to breathe.

“Snobby, are we?”

“Yes.”

“You realize that one drop of my blood could add years onto your life?”

“I don’t care. Get me Bucky.”

Loki raises an eyebrow.

“Or Sam,” Steve says quickly. “Is Sam okay?”

“Your friend has done splendidly,” Loki says. “We’ll have to try harder to recruit him.” 

“Why is everything stopped?” Steve asks, his environment finally beginning to materialize and steady around him. 

“Most of them are dead,” Loki says. To Steve’s surprise, they take a seat on the floor beside him. They look wan; lifeless. They look like they’re trying to catch their breath. “Carol’s explosives knocked them out, and Elektra and Pietro made short work of setting the bodies on fire. You ought to be a little satisfied with yourself— I watched you fire a bullet straight into Malekith’s heart.”

“Was he the ugly one?”

“Yes.”

A chunk of plaster falls out of the ceiling yards away, and bursts into flame. A decapitated head rolls to Loki’s feet; they kick it away with a soft sound of disgust. A man is screaming in another room, and Steve is reminded, briefly, of disaster film endings— the living leftovers covered in blood, and sweat, and laughing. He takes a deep breath, and they watch Thor and Hela in silence for a while.

“Why aren’t you helping him?” Steve asks. 

“She insisted on a duel.” 

“You can do that?”

“Apparently,” Loki says, licking their lips. Thor has Hela in a chokehold, briefly— she breaks out of it and slashes at his chest with twin blades. “I suppose it was in the fine print my idiot sister and my idiot lover failed to consider.”

“What will you do if he loses?” 

“Would you like the honest answer?”

“I mean,” Steve says. “Yeah.”

“I’ll kill you all.” Loki stands, brushing themselves off. Their voice is flat; resigned. “But maybe it won’t come to that. Either way, I’ll send Bucky Barnes over to you now.” 

And with that, they walk away.

Exhausted, Steve rests his head back— the contact from the wall sending dull aches through his brain— and watches Thor and Hela take swipes at one another. He feels untethered somehow, both from this moment and from his reality. It could be the concussion, or the blood loss, or the carefully constructed understanding of right and wrong, good and bad, human and monster shattering around him, pieces of his faith undoing one another, glass shards in the atmosphere. Steve Rogers is not a man prone to compromises, but he is a flawed man and has no misconceptions about it either. What he is willing to do is try. 

Hela’s hands clasp around Thor’s neck; there is venom in her eyes and teeth. She was a beautiful woman, once. Unnervingly, she is a beautiful woman still. It’s slow motion between them, an animation that doesn’t quite seem like it’s happening. Steve is tired enough to die.

The moment he closes his eyes someone is shaking him awake again— a dream sequence that never ends.

“Don’t be stupid,” Bucky says, crouching, holding his open wrist to Steve’s mouth. “This is a terrible place to die.”

“During a vampire war?” Steve mumbles like a drunk, tasting copper, and salt, and light.

“In _New Jersey_.” 

Steve laughs at that, and begins coughing. He hears Bucky say _for Christ’s sake_ though the lights and shadows blur in his vision, blinding him. 

“Drink more,” Bucky says, pressing something wet and warm and terrible to his mouth. 

“No,” Steve says, but knows that he will die otherwise, and does so anyway. 

The time for death is later. The time for death is after Odin.

Time passes— minutes or years. Steve wonders blandly what they will do once daylight comes. He feels his bones unbreaking though it’s slow, patching himself together like a puzzle made of skin. Bucky unties the tourniquet around his arm and checks it carefully, eyes so focused they seem to turn a deeper shade of blue, the color of sea storms and drowning. 

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he says, quietly, and Steve’s not sure whether they’re in a dream.

“I know,” he replies. 

A gash across his forehead heals, blood trickling up and back and inside. The walls become walls again. Finally, Steve remembers he has legs, and he is able to stand on them, and the floor underneath him feels more solid than jelly. 

“What are you doing?” Bucky says, standing beside him.

Steve remembers him, too— the vampire who saved his life. It almost makes him smile. 

“I have to find Odin.” 

“What?” Buck says. “No. No one ever has to do that.”

Steve stops. Looks at him very carefully. “You know him,” he says.

“No,” Bucky shakes his head. “I’ve _heard_ of him— just like I’ve heard of everyone else in this terrible place. We should just leave while we can.” 

“You leave while you can,” Steve says.

“Jesus _Christ_.” 

“Leave him out of this.” 

Steve takes a second— palm pressed against the wall, steady— and begins to move. Remnants of bodies freckle his way. An entire wing has been set on fire, and as he teeters too close to it his hair clings to his eyes. He strips his coat off, leaves it on the floor. A vampire— faceless, moving too quick— pounces at him from the left and Steve throws it off of him. Throws his knife at its throat and watches it squirm on the ground, panting. Wants to save his bullets for Odin. 

There are cracks in the walls. Empty rooms where the fearful can hide. Steve doesn’t think Odin is the hiding type. He keeps moving. 

Working with instinct alone, he pushes through the large metal doors to the staircase, and begins climbing down. Belatedly he realizes that Bucky has been following him, again, and the vampire stops now, at the top of the staircase. They look at one another.

“I don’t want you to die,” Bucky says, and shrugs. 

Steve makes his way back up.

“I’m not going to die,” he says.

“This whole place is on fire,” Bucky says. His hair is loose, soft despite the blood caked to it. Whose blood? Steve wants to ask, but doesn’t, of course. “Sam refuses to leave without you.”

“You saw him?”

“Yeah. He took out two of Hela’s henchmen with one blade.” Bucky smiles. “It was actually kind of cool. Sif’s with him now, rounding up the others.”

“I’ll tell him,” Steve nods. “When we get out of this, later. I’ll tell him you think he’s cool.” 

Outside, something cracks and falls. Another hunk of ceiling, Steve thinks. Or bodies. 

“I have to do this,” Steve says. 

“I know.”

“You’re not here to try to stop me?”

“No,” Bucky laughs, and it’s sad somehow. “I think I’ve come to terms with what a stubborn asshole you are.”

“Oh, good,” Steve says. “That’s nice. Nice to hear on the eve of my maybe-death.” 

“You just said you weren’t going to die.”

“ _You_ don’t know that for sure, though.” 

“Don’t make jokes,” Bucky says. Ash dances around his head like a halo. 

“Okay,” Steve says. Solemn. Quiet. “No more jokes. I’ll see you on the other side,” he says, and turns away.

“Wait.”

Steve turns back, and finds that he isn’t surprised when Bucky puts his arms around his neck, and kisses him gently. He tastes alive. 

“Promise you won’t die,” Bucky says. The light clings to him. 

“I promise,” Steve says.

Bucky takes a last look at him, nods once, and is gone. Some things you have to do alone. Steve continues down the steps while the world turns to ember and blood around him. 

The battle has not quite reached the basement; the air is cooler down here and there is very little debris. It’s dark like a survival video game, dystopian and green somehow, what little life there is left is just a flicker. Steve moves down the hallway with the confidence of a man who is already dead, and has nothing left to lose. 

At the end he reaches an open door and walks into the room— what looks to be old office space— where an old man is sitting behind a desk. He looks unassuming, shorter than Steve, with long white hair and an eyepatch. He is focused on something innocuous and out-of-place: the crossword.

“You must be the vampire hunter,” Odin says, without looking up from his papers. 

Steve takes his gun out of its holster. 

“I assume you are here to kill me,” Odin says.

“You’re not wrong,” Steve says.

“I assume my son sent you. What have I done? Killed your wife? Stolen your children?”

“You killed my ma,” Steve says, calmly. “Her name was Sarah Rogers. She was only 45.” 

Odin looks up at him now, finally. He nods. “I might have. It seems unlikely— but I’ll give us both the benefit of the doubt. How long ago was this?”

“Ten years.” 

“And where?”

“Here,” Steve says, faltering for the first time. The man’s calm throws him off balance. “No— in New York. It was in Brooklyn.” 

“I see,” Odin says, nodding again. He sets his pen down. “Well, my son. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I was not in Brooklyn ten years ago. In fact, I’ve only been on the east coast the last seven years or so— give or take a few months.”

“Why would I ever believe that?”

“Why did you believe Thor— I assume it was Thor— when he gave you misleading information?”

“We have an agreement,” Steve says, gritting his teeth.

“I’m sure. Has it been an honest one?”

Steve doesn’t say anything to that. It’s too quiet in the room— not even the faintest buzz of a radiator disturbs them. He feels, manically, like the silence will suck all the air out of it. 

“I didn’t think so. What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t say. It’s Steve.” 

“Well, Steve,” Odin says, standing. “You may choose to kill me if you like. I have lived a very long, very bloody life— and I am tired. My wife is gone. My children are monsters. I did not kill your mother, yet, probably, I deserve this. Go ahead, then.” 

“I don’t believe you,” Steve says, keeping his aim steady. 

“Then what are you waiting for?” 

  
  


***

  
  


Steve Rogers, true to his word, makes it out of the warehouse alive. Without seeing, without hearing, without thinking, he steps onto the PATH, and rides away from New Jersey forever.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How could it ever work?” Steve asks, voice quiet. Bucky wants so badly to press the sadness out of his eyes.
> 
> “We’d figure it out. At least we can say we tried.”

Steve hears about it later. Hela dead, Fenris destroyed, construction begun. The original Ragnarok is so successful, they’re making a new one— building it right over an old warehouse in Hoboken, New Jersey. The papers write about a terrible fire, weeks ago. They write about how a new nightclub will be good for morale, for establishing Hoboken as a trendy location for college students and young professionals. Steve watches it on the news, immobile, the only light in his apartment coming from the glow of the TV. Its thick, indecipherable hum melding with the occasional chew of his mouth— dry cereal, a handful of trail mix. His coffee goes cold, again and again. He microwaves it when he remembers. 

Because he has stopped answering her calls, Claire begins to make house visits. 

“You don’t appreciate me enough,” she says, unceremoniously, when Steve answers the door.

“Don’t come then.”

“Someone has to make sure you’re eating,” Claire says, narrowing her eyes. “Both of you. Why is it that every man I meet likes to suffer?”

“You make bad choices,” Steve says.

The curtains are always drawn, blinds shut underneath them. Sam cautiously walks around them, offering Claire a drink. The oven clock blinks: 6:02am. 

“How long are you going to sulk?” Claire asks. The bags under her eyes are just as bad; she’s in trouble with the hospital again. She looks from Steve to Sam. “And what do you have to say for yourself?”

“Nothing,” Sam says, lifting his hands in surrender. “Please don’t hurt me.”

She drains her glass of water, washes it, and sets it on the drying rack. Then, just as she has done for the past two weeks, she places a blood bag in the fridge. She doesn’t comment on its other contents— an empty gallon of milk, half a hunk of bread. 

“I can’t make it tomorrow,” Claire says, turning back toward the men. “I’ll have a friend come by.”

“That’s okay, Claire,” Sam offers. “We can manage one day without you.”

“No,” she says. “I don’t think you can.” 

When Steve answers the door the next day— counting the days now only by the women who come and go— he is surprised for the first time in weeks. Smiling at him, serene and radiant, is the professional-looking woman he met outside of Ragnarok, all those nights ago. Karen Page.

“Hi, Steve,” she says. “May I come in?”

“Are you suddenly someone who needs an invitation?” 

“It’s the polite thing to do,” Karen says. “I could barge through you, if I wanted.”

“You don’t seem like the type of woman who barges,” Steve says, stepping aside for her.

“Oh,” she says, her smile like the sun, “You have no idea what type of woman I am.”

Once inside, she begins to unpack two reusable totes full of groceries along with the blood bag from the hospital. She casts a look at Sam, who is reading a book on the couch. “ _The Vampire Lestat_?” she asks. “Really? It’s almost sun up.”

“We’re pretty well insulated in here,” Sam says. “And hey— don’t knock Anne Rice. She’s mostly wrong, but her characters are a lot more exciting than the real thing.”

“That’s because you spend all your time cooped up with Mid-Life Crisis over there,” Karen says, gesturing to Steve. “You should get out more, have some fun. Maybe join a late-night chess club.”

“Is that your idea of excitement? Because…”

Karen laughs. “It could have been, in another life.” 

“What is it now?” Steve cuts in, helping her with the groceries out of common courtesy alone. 

“Oh, this and that.”

“I don’t understand what you see in them,” he says. Steve discovers she’s gotten the essentials, like eggs and bacon, but also chocolate, instant ramen, pre-sliced fruit. He realizes belatedly that he feels grateful. 

“Not them.”

“One of them, then.”

Karen looks at him for a long while. She has an orange in her hand; she’s slicing it into pieces. For him. Sam watches them, a finger in between the pages of his book, holding his place.

“You don’t choose who you love,” she says quietly, deliberately. “When you find one another, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how unrealistic it might seem, you figure it out together. You make sure that you do. That’s not just— wishful, naive thinking. That’s _all_ of life. And to think that you can just walk away from it, because— ” She scoffs, shaking her head— “because it’s _easier_ , that’s what’s naive. That’s thinking it won’t haunt you wherever you go, forever. I promise you that it will.”

“It’s too late,” Steve says. 

“Love’s not that fragile.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“You’re just going to have to trust me on that one, vampire hunter.”

Steve nearly smiles. “Will you tell me who it is you put up with all of this for?”

“Yes,” Karen says, matching his smile. She hands him half the orange. “His name is Frank Castle.” A pause. She sets the knife down, licks the juice sliding down her index finger. “And if you so much as touch a hair on his head, I will find you, and I will kill you.” 

Watching the blonde of her hair as she walks out the door, and down the hall, and disappears from sight, Steve decides to go back to church.

  
  


***

  
  


It’s deja vu. Candles flicker against stone and stained glass. The same woman there, crying. Steve almost turns back, walks away, but the priest catches his eye and nods. It’s one thing to run away from your own life, and another to run away from Matthew Murdock. 

Steve takes a seat in a pew near the back; he puts his hands together. 

_Been a while_ , he says to God. 

God doesn’t answer.

_I didn’t want to come. You know it feels like weakness being here. You know I compromised my morals and convinced myself I was doing it for the greater good. You know that no sign you’ll ever show is going to bring me back to the light._

The church oppresses. He can see his breath out in front of him, it’s so cold. He wonders what happened to his childhood friend, a boy so angry his rage looked like calm, to draw him to this place. The things that happen to all little boys who grow up without a father in a city that eats parents and dreams. Looking at Murdock, now, near that cursed altar, talking to a thin, hunched man, Steve sees the rage again. An anger so dark and terrible it feels Catholic. 

He puts his head down again.

_I don’t think you’re the light, anyway. I think the light is in all the places I never expected it to be, and I had to figure it out for myself. Nothing I’ve learned has been granted by you. I did it all myself, and whatever choices I made brought me back to this you-forsaken city, to the vampires who got the better of me, to the fact of my mother dying without reckoning, a fact I can never fix or right no matter how many vampires I kill. I wanted you to know that you were never there for me._

“Does He listen?” 

Steve looks up, startled, to find Bucky Barnes sitting next to him, staring at the altar ahead. 

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Does He answer?”

“No,” Steve says. “He never answers.” 

“Then why do you keep talking?”

Steve shifts in his seat, turning toward the vampire. 

“I’m sorry for the way everything went down,” Bucky says.

“Did you know?”

“No.”

“Then what are you sorry for?”

“You were hurt,” Bucky says. “You didn’t get what you wanted out of any of this.”

“I should have known better,” Steve says, standing. “That’s on me.”

Bucky stands, too. They move toward the votive candles where they light one each in silence.

“I asked you to trust them,” Bucky says. 

“I remember.”

“Did you wind up killing him? Odin?”

“Does it matter?”

“I thought it mattered to you,” Bucky says, gently. “I thought it would bring you closure. I think that’s what Thor thought, too.” 

Steve watches the candles for a long moment, so red they seem haunted. He lights another one. “For Thor,” he says. “One last prayer before the end of his very long life.” 

“Oh,” Bucky says. 

“I assume you’ll warn him that I’m coming.” 

“I’ll have to,” Bucky nods. “Yeah.” 

“And I assume this is the last time I’ll ever see you.” 

The chill seems to permeate from the stone walls, seeping into Steve’s skin and bones. It settles there like a curse. When Bucky takes his hand and pulls him away from the candles, he does not resist. Bucky, somehow warmer than this devotion to God. An undead thing with all the gentleness of morning. 

He stops them in front of the Virgin Mary— the same altar Murdock had pointed out to Steve all that time ago. She holds the baby Jesus in one arm and reaches out to them with the other. Things come full circle. They have to. 

“I like to come here and look at her,” Bucky says. “She seems powerful surrounded by all of this light. I think it reminds me that I have power, too.”

When Steve doesn’t answer, Bucky continues. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t agree with what you’re doing, but I don’t want— it just feels like we’re on the verge of something, doesn’t it? I get why you’re doing it. I get why you decided to dedicate your life to this. But you’re not all black and white, no matter how much you try to be. Your best friend is a vampire, and he lives with you. And you— I know you feel— at least, I thought you did.” 

“How could it ever work?” Steve asks, voice quiet. Bucky wants so badly to press the sadness out of his eyes.

“We’d figure it out. At least we can say we tried.”

“I don’t know,” Steve says.

“That’s so weird,” Bucky says, shaking his head. 

“What’s weird?”

“I just… never pegged you as a quitter. You know. Someone who gives up.”

“I’m not a quitter,” Steve says, abruptly, looking alive. It makes Bucky smile. “We could do this if we wanted to.”

Bucky takes one step toward him and they’re suddenly nose-to-nose, standing in the warmth of one another. 

“I like your depression beard,” he says, quietly. “Did you miss me that much?”

“I missed you,” Steve says, and kisses him. 

It feels more sacred than anything else in the tiny, cold cathedral. It feels like a homecoming, familiar and bright. Steve holds Bucky’s face in his hands and he lets himself come home. 

“This is probably not the right place for this,” Bucky says, after they’ve pulled away. “You know. Church.”

“I’d be inclined to agree,” says a voice from behind Steve. The priest. “But I’ll let it slide, just this once.”

“I don’t know how you can even tell,” Steve says, turning to him. 

“I see more than you do,” Murdock says, and has the indecency to smile. 

“We should get going,” Steve says. He takes Bucky’s hand in his. 

A week goes by, and he uses that same hand to fill his backpack with explosives and plant them inside of Ragnarok in the middle of the day. No one sees him come or go. The vampires here have gotten overly confident in their arrogance. They think because they are the only ones left that they are invincible. Steve buys a plate of halal chicken and rice from the corner truck, and climbs up onto the roof of the building across the street, and watches Ragnarok burn, and burn, and burn. 

He goes home to his impossibly dark apartment. 

He crawls into the arms of the man he is falling in love with and wraps the blankets up around them real tight, to keep out the light.

**bucky and steve under the altar by ubertrash**


	11. Epilogue

The sea rages around them like a Bible verse. Loki likes it that way. 

The others, rising from their coffins, feast on the cabin and crew by candlelight, stealing their warmth in the black of night. Only their King sits solitary at the captain’s desk, composing a letter like a sonnet. 

“I thought you’d be done by now,” Loki says, putting their arms around him from behind, kissing the crown of his head. Thor smells like salt water and incense these nights and Loki keeps making excuses to disturb him from his work. 

“The tone should be right,” Thor says. He takes Loki’s hand and kisses their palm, their wrist. Bites it and draws blood, draws a soft moan from Loki’s lips.

“Fuck the tone,” they hiss into Thor’s ear. “Take me above deck and fuck me in this storm where only the gods can hear us.”

“Tempting,” Thor says, distractedly. He gives Loki’s wrist a final lick before dropping it. “Maybe later.” 

“I hate Steve Rogers.”

“Mhm.” 

“You are sleeping in your own coffin tomorrow,” Loki says. Which means, of course, that Thor will have to sacrifice one of the others to the daylight. Loki made sure long ago that he would never have a coffin of his own— only the bigger one that they sleep in together. Whenever they fight, a vampire from their coven pays the price for it. 

“Very well,” Thor mumbles, and Loki leaves him there with his quill, and his ink, and his surprisingly elegant penmanship. Thor knows that he will answer for this, later, but Steve Rogers has become an obsession of his that he cannot shake. 

Bucky Barnes’s warning had come at a good time, though they had expected retaliation in some form or another anyway. It was a shame to have to leave New York after all of their hard work— unable to celebrate the satisfaction of Hela’s destruction, or of Odin’s death. Thor had hated the old man for centuries; and, there was as much of a likelihood as his having a hand in the death of Sarah Rogers as any other vampire in the city. Thor hadn’t lied, exactly. He had suggested. Two birds. One vampire hunter. 

Did it work?

Thor suspects not. He is certain Odin is still out there somewhere. He looks back at his letter, which he has started and ended a hundred times. He has written pages and pages, and thrown them all away. 

What he settles on finally is simple and to the point. It says:

_ Steve Rogers, _

_ I will find you again. When night comes. _


End file.
